


Come On Home

by Hinn_Raven



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Abandonment, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Neglect, Family, Felix Being a Dick, Gen, Manipulation, One-Sided Locington, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-08 21:13:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12262200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: After the war, Locus ends up spending his days on Hawaii, where he meets Kai and Grif. Nothing will ever be the same.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of Grif feelings after this season, and his dynamic with Locus was INCREDIBLE. So I threw around an AU where Locus got redeemed pre-Chorus through the power of Kai and Grif being a family. I got a shocking amount of support for it, but put it in a drawer because I had too much going on. Fastforward to now, add in a very encouraging sroloc_elbisivni, and well. Here we are. 
> 
> Special thanks to a-taller-tale for being my beta here, and illumynare, who let me borrow her origin for Locus's scar.

Locus doesn’t like this city. It’s loud, cramped, and swamped with tourists. Most are _civilian_ tourists, but others are like Locus. He sees uniforms out of the corner of his eye, recognizes the postures and scars on others. Some are on leave. Those ones tend to gather in groups.

And a few are like him. No home to go to after their tours ended, so when asked to be dropped off, they picked somewhere unlike the war. Somewhere bright and sunny and beautiful.

Hawaii had been Felix’s idea, when they had gone their separate ways. For a moment, Locus had thought that Felix was going to suggest they return to their old ways, to the bounty circuit. But Siris wasn’t interested, and without Siris, there was no reason for them to stay together. Siris had gone home, to Megan and his children. Felix had things to take care of. Locus had nothing.

So here he is, wandering the streets of a tourist trap city on an island. In the distance, a busker is playing music. It’s too cheerful, Locus feels. The crowd is obnoxious, pressing in at all sides. The streets crawl with pick pockets, but the thieves are smart enough to avoid the soldiers, let alone soldiers like Locus. One look at his scar is enough to tell people exactly what he is.

Noticing someone staring at him, he ducks his head and turns into one of the shops that line the street. Half of the wares are out on the street, while the rest are inside the building. There are small statuettes, cheaply painted and obnoxiously colored. Siris’ children might like them, Locus thinks, weighing one of them in his hand. It’s a turtle.

But then he remembers that Siris says he wants to put the life behind him, and he knows that it includes him. He places the turtle back down on the shelf and goes back out onto the street.

A group of children are on the other side of the road now. They’re loud; laughing and shouting and pushing each other good naturedly. A game is starting, but it’s not any that Locus recognizes. There’s a basketball, some chalk, and several jump ropes tied together to form one long rope.

For a moment, Locus just watches. They’re freshly out of school; many of them are still carrying their backpacks. It’s been a long time since Locus has been near children. They’re not common in a warzone, and it’s been years since he visited Siris and Megan and their children.

He turns his attention to the next store. This one is selling used books. Locus browses, looking to see if there’s anything interesting.

It’s a soldier’s habit, watching the children out of the corner of his eye. The noise ensures that he can’t quite forget them, and some older instinct makes him not want to. So he sees it the second it happens.

One of the loudest girls, wearing a bright yellow shirt, trips over something. Stumbling, she falls onto her hands and knees right in the middle of the street, in front of oncoming traffic.

Locus moves without thinking. He charges forward, grabs her by the arm, and pulls her out of the way. The car screeches to a halt, right where she had been moments before.

“Fuck!” The girl yells. Her hands and knees are scraped, and her eyes are wide with fear.

“Are you alright?” He asks. He realizes that he’s still holding her arm and drops it.

She stares up at him, and he’s struck by how young she is. For a moment, she’s perfectly still, and he wonders if she’s staring at his scar, before she bursts into tears, shaking from head to toe with the power of her sobs. Shock, he realizes.

Locus has no idea what to do. In the war, tears were to be ignored. A moment of weakness. But this isn’t war. This is a _child_ , who could have died in the middle of a road while playing a game.

Awkwardly, he places a hand on her shoulder. “Is there…” he struggles, trying to figure out what Siris would say here. “Is there something I can do? Where are your parents?”

She shakes her head, still crying. “Can I walk you home? You need to clean those cuts.”

She manages to nod, her nose dripping. She takes one step and cries out, falling over again. Locus manages to catch her, helping her sit down.

Locus checks her ankle. “It’s sprained,” he says. “We might need to go to a hospital.”

She shakes her head. “No hospitals, Dex says,” she says, her voice shaking.

Locus nods. “Very well,” he says. He certainly knows what that’s like. It’s not his place to ask questions, but perhaps there’s something else he can do. “I… I can carry you home, if you’d rather not walk.”

She gives him a big smile, even if it wavers a bit. “Piggy back?” She asks, almost eagerly. “Cuz you’re _suuuuper_ tall and I bet you can see _forever_ , so it’ll be _way_ better than Dex!”

Locus blinks, then realizes she’s recovering and resuming her natural... vivaciousness. Maybe this is more shock. But he lets her climb onto his back. She waves goodbye to her friends, who seem oddly unconcerned with her nearly dying, has Locus collect her backpack from a nearby stoop, and then they head out.

She directs him towards the worst part of town, far away from the tourist traps. Locus had wandered here the night before, half searching for a fight. He hadn’t found one then. Six foot three of former soldier is hardly a tempting target for muggers, no matter how desperate.

The house she tells him to stop at is old and kept in just good enough repair to not draw eyes or commentary.

She gives him the key out of her backpack, and he unlocks the door. The inside is exactly the same as the outside. It would be cleaner, Locus suspects, if the inhabitants had more time, but there’s an air of desperation here. They’re cutting corners, pinching pennies. As he sets the girl down on the couch, he realizes everything she’s wearing is brand new and clean, in perfect contrast to everything else. Whoever is looking after her is doing a good job.

He fetches the first aid kit from the bathroom, and sets about wrapping her ankle and cleaning the scrapes on her hands and knees. She chatters the whole time, telling him about the rules of the game they’d been playing and about how stupid tourists never looked when driving down that road anyways.

“I’m Kaikaina,” she adds, when Locus finishes putting the bright pink band aids on her palms.

“… Sam,” he barely catches himself before he says Locus.

She grins up at him. She’s so _young_ , he thinks. So small, so trusting. She doesn’t know what he did during the war, doesn’t know anything about him.

The door was opened. “ _Kai_! I told you to lock the door, for fuckssake— _who the fuck are you_?”

“Shut up, Dex,” Kaikaina yells back. “This is Sam! He helped me get home!” She stuck out her leg. “I fell,” she adds.

“Dex” is a few years older than Kaikaina. About sixteen, he thinks. Kaikaina has happily disclosed that she’s eleven.His hair is long, and his clothes are in much worse shape than hers, but they have the same face, the same eyes. He’s wearing a uniform of some kind—probably fast food. “Great, thanks, you can go now.”

“Deeeeex,” Kaikaina whines. “He saved my life! The car was _totally_ gonna hit me, you can tell cuz the lady’s bra was halfway off and she had her hands down the guy’s pants! But Sam pulled me out of there and it’s totally fine!”

“Wait, _what_?” Dex says, and Locus isn’t sure if it’s in response to the detail about the driver or the discovery that his sister had nearly just died.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I should get going.”

Dex squints at him. “You’re a tourist?”

Locus shrugs. “I’m… recently discharged.” His lease is long run out back home, and his things are still in storage, but he doesn’t know if he should even think about going to get them. They feel like they belong in a life long before, a simpler life.

“Where are you staying at?” Kaikaina says.

Locus blinks. “I spent last night at the Aloha Inn.” He’s been drifting around. He alternates between single night stays in various hotels or just sleeping on the beaches. He’s been here two weeks now, trying to figure out where he’s going next.

She wrinkles her nose. “That’s a _sex place_!”

He frowns at her. “How old are you?”

She sticks her tongue out at him. “I know things!”

Dex stares at him for a long moment. He’s hostile, untrusting, a complete contrast to his… sister, Locus decides.

Kaikaina kicks him with her not-injured foot. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

Locus stares at the two of them, at this house. He doubts that the two of them can afford feeding him. “I should get going,” he says.

Kaikaina pouts at him, her bottom lip trembling. “Please?”

Dex and Locus share a moment of eye contact, and Dex’s shoulders slump. “Yeah. You should… stay.”

Locus ends up sitting on the floor playing poker with Kaikaina while Dex fixes dinner. Locus quietly makes a note to leave some money in the couch when he leaves. He can afford it for now. He’s just drifting anyways. There’s nothing left for him.

Kaikaina is good at poker, and Locus loses all of the M&Ms that she’d produced from a cupboard to her faster than he’d lose money to Felix. He doesn’t complain, just helps her to the kitchen table when Dex announces that dinner is ready.

It’s simple; rice and vegetables, but it’s well made. Dex is good at cooking, clearly, even without too many ingredients or much time. There’s no sign of any plate for a parent, or expectation of one. The house is clearly set up for two people, but Dex is also clearly too young to be legally looking after Kaikaina by himself.

Even just letting him be here is a risk for these two, Locus realizes. His presence threatens everything. Kaikaina might not realize it, but Dex certainly does. No wonder he doesn’t want Locus here.

“How long were you in the army?” Dex asks, trying to look tough while he cuts up his vegetables. He’s evaluating him, Locus recognizes. Fishing for information, trying to see who it is that he’s  allowed into his house and to be near his sister.

Locus frowns, and tries to do the math. “… nine years,” he says. Seven, technically, but there were also those years he had been with Felix and Siris, also years stained in blood.

Dex frowns at him. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight,” Locus says.

“And you just got out?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Where’d you get that scar?” Kaikaina asks. “It looks _really cool_.”

_They hold him down, their language strange and scraping to his ears as they rip off his helmet. They’re laughing at him, but they’re also furious at him. He killed three of them before they caught him, this is payback as much as business._

_One of them activates a plasma sword and presses it against his face. They’re playing with their food, drawing out his death._

_The plasma cuts into his skin, burning as it cuts, and Sam can’t stop the scream of pain they rip from his throat as they cut the two intersecting lines down the center of his face in a mockery of his helmet._

“Sam? _Sam_!”

Locus shakes himself out of his reverie. He tries to judge how long he’d been quiet and still, lost in the memory. At least it was a quiet one. He can’t imagine Dex would be looking at him in concern if he had lashed out.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should go.” He gets to his feet, shame burning through him. It was foolish of him to try to pretend to be ordinary, even just for these few moments. He is far too broken to be near children. Siris had the right of it.

“Do you still have your room at the Aloha?” Dex asks.

Sam shakes his head, too tired to lie.

Kai frowns. “It’s _way_ too late to get a room for the night,” she says. “You can’t just _leave_!” Her eyes are wide and watering, but Locus refuses to fall for this a second time. They were lucky that his mind only wandered. He’s seen the bruises on Felix after his worse episodes. He refuses to hurt these two.

“I’ll be fine,” he says.

Kai turns to Dex immediately. “ _Dex_ ,” she says urgently, tugging on his sleeve. “ _Deeeeeex_.”

“You should stay,” Dex says abruptly. “We’ll make up the couch for you.”

Locus shakes his head. “I’ve… imposed on you long enough.” He bolts for the door, and neither of them are fast enough to stop him. They’re children, while he is a soldier. A machine, made to kill, and nothing more.

But now he’s not, but he still doesn’t fit, not anywhere, but especially not in that small house with the two of them.

It’s only when he is settling down for the night, on the soft white sands of one of the beaches about a mile from the small house, that he realizes he forgot to leave money.

* * *

Grif knows that Sam is still around, even if he doesn’t see him. Someone left groceries on the porch, and it certainly wasn’t Mom. And some days, when Grif is walking too or from work, he feels like somebody is watching him. Kai says the same thing.

He knows some soldiers come home fucked up—Mom’s said some things. And some of her boyfriends were like that. They weren’t the _worst_ of her boyfriends, but some of them were pretty bad. But he doesn’t know what to do about Sam. Kai _really_ likes the guy, and well… Grif guesses that he’s not _all_ that bad. He’s pretty quiet, and anyone who likes Kai and saves her from a car can’t be completely terrible.

Things are tight this week though, so he can’t exactly complain about the groceries. He’s not sure how a guy who’s sleeping at shitty motels or on park benches (he’s asked around; a guy like Sam tends to stick out) can afford groceries like that, but Grif doesn’t ask.

Kai is the one to find him. He looks worse than he did last time they saw him; he’s got a traces of a beard now, and he looks just a little dirtier and less put together. He’s wearing the same clothes, too, which Grif counts as points for his “homeless” theory.

Kai’s already made up the couch for Sam, and Grif doesn’t say anything, just nods at Sam and goes to start dinner.

Sam spends the evening playing cards with Kai again, and the night on the couch. He screams at night, but luckily Kai sleeps right through it.

But when they wake up the next morning, Sam is gone. The couch is neatly made, and there’s signs that he used their shower. There’s money on the counter too—not much, but Grif puts it in the jar anyways, because every penny counts. Kai cries, and Grif resolves that next time he sees Sam, he’ll punch him.

Sam shows up that night though, in new clothes and cleanly shaven, and wordlessly hands Grif a container of takeout from one of the better places in town.

Grif doesn’t know what to make of Sam. He always is gone in the mornings, but he’s always there for dinner. He puts money in the jar, and it’s starting to drive Grif crazy, because this isn’t supposed to have lasted this long. He’s a _tourist_. He’s supposed to go _home_.

But Sam doesn’t ever talk about going to the mainland, or even another island, or going back to space. He never takes money _out_ of the jar, just puts it in.

Nobody stays this long; not Dad, not Mom, not any of Mom’s boyfriends. He wants something, clearly, but Grif can’t figure out what it _is_. He doesn’t look at Kai (or Grif, for that matter) in the weird, creepy way some of Mom’s boyfriends have. He’s never hurt them or stolen anything from the house (Grif’s checked).

It’s too good to be true, and Grif knows this even more surely after the day he catches Sam driving away those kids who had been picking on Kai. Something in Grif has to relax, just slightly at that. Sure, he’s not going to stick around, but at least he knows that Sam won’t let anything happen to Kai.

But Sam isn’t _getting_ anything out of this. There’s nothing in this for him. There’s no reason at all why he would care, let alone stick around.

So one day when Kai’s at a friend’s for a sleepover, and Sam has shown up with a paper bag full of fresh fruit (he works at a green grocers now, Grif’s finally figured this out, that’s where the money and the food are always coming from), Grif snaps.

“What do you _want_?” Grif demands.

Sam stares at him, confused. “I… I don’t understand.”

“You want something!” Grif says, pointing at him. “You keep… you act like you _care_ but we both know you’re going to take off to do something else, because there’s no way you’re staying _here_ forever!”

Sam looks perplexed. “Do you want me to leave?”

“I—it doesn’t matter!” Grif snaps.

Sam shrugs. “I don’t want anything,” he says, and he sounds the way he does when he talks about the war.

“Great, then when do you leave? Because Kai’s getting _attached_ , do you have any idea how much she’s going to cry when you leave?” It’ll be worse than the last time Mom left, Grif’s sure of it. Kai’s used to Mom leaving by now. Sam has stayed for _two months_ now, and it’s going to break her heart.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Sam says. “I... like it. Here.”

Grif stares at him for a long, long time.

“You’re,” Sam clears his throat. “You’re skipping school.”

“We need the money,” Grif says automatically.

But it’s not true, not anymore. Sam’s paycheck… helps. A lot. Grif could probably afford to not take the hours during the school day anymore.

“You’ll leave soon enough,” he scoffs. “We’ll need the money.”

Sam doesn’t protest, so Grif feels pretty justified.

“You need to go to school,” Sam insists. “School—school is important.”

“It’s not like I’m good at it,” Grif rolls his eyes. He turns around, expecting the conversation to be over. Sam brought hotdogs home the other day, and they’re the kind that Kai can’t stand. That’ll be good enough for the two of them.

“How about a deal?” Sam asks instead. Grif stops up short.

He squints at Sam. “What kind of deal?” A thousand scenarios run through his head, and the bad ones all make Grif freeze up, because Sam is _big,_ and Grif can’t _make_ him leave if they need to get rid of him.

“You don’t skip school as long as I’m here,” Sam says. “When I leave, you can start again.”

That’s... unexpected. But he pauses, thinking about it. It might be nice not to have to be on his feet all day as well as after school. And... he likes school okay. Even if he’s not great at it.

Grif rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says. “I guess a few weeks of school won’t kill me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH everyone who supported the first chapter! 
> 
> As a warning, this chapter contains Felix, and all that he implies. While I do promise a happy ending for this universe, things are going to be rough for a while. If you wish to pretend that the first chapter is the only chapter, I will not blame you. 
> 
> Thanks to a-taller-tale for being a kickass beta!

Having _two_ big brothers is the best.

Things are better now that Sam’s here. Dex doesn’t always look like he’s going to cry the minute Kai goes to bed because he’s so worried about bills and things. There’s someone to walk Kai home from school, some days. Dex still works a lot, but he works less now, and Sam’s job has set hours, so he’s always home for dinner. And he’s big and scary looking when he wants to be, so people don’t bother them.

Sam still won’t move into Mom’s old room, no matter how much Dex tells him to. It’s been months, and he’s still sleeping on the couch, which is now pretty much just his bed. Kai thinks it’s because he likes to be near the door, where he can make sure he knows that everything’s alright.

The house is full of Sam now, which makes Kai happy. There’s a razor in the bathroom, there’s three plates and three cups in the dish rack in the mornings. The house is tidier too; Sam likes to keep things clean in a way that Dex and Kai had never been able to manage, but it seems to calm Sam down, going through all the motions. He remakes their beds, most days, because they don’t do it “right”, whatever that means. Dex says it’s a soldier thing. Kai just thinks it’s a Sam thing, because some of Mom’s old boyfriends were soldiers, and none of them got so fussy about the corners. Kai starts to leave her bed unmade in the mornings, but Sam doesn’t even seem to be bothered. He just makes it for her.

Today is Saturday, so Kai’s home alone. She’s going to go out with her friends later, because Victoria’s got an in at the movie theater so they can sneak in through the back door, but right now she’s trying to bake cookies. She’s not really good at baking, but she can do okay, and Dex loves it when they’ve got sweet things, so she’s putting in the effort.

She’s just putting the cookies in the oven when the doorbell rings.

Kai frowns. They don’t get visitors much. Social services isn’t supposed to come this month either, so she doesn’t know who it could be.

She opens the door, even though she knows Dex and Sam probably wouldn’t want her to, but screw them, they also don’t like her going out with her friends or going ice skating or any other fun things.

The man standing on their doorstep is short, pale, and skinny, with a grin that makes Kai nervous. He has hair like some of the boys at school, all gelled and styled up in points. His eyes are brown, and they look confused as he looks down at her. She’s not who he’s expecting to see here. Is he looking for Mom? He doesn’t look like social services, or Kai doesn’t recognize him as any of Mom’s ex-boyfriends.

“ _Hey_ there,” he says, eyes flickering over her head, as if expecting to see someone show up behind her. “Is Locus here?”

Kai wonders who Locus is. But she decides it doesn’t matter. Sam and Dex are pretty clear that she’s not even supposed to open the door when she’s home alone, and this guy gives her the creeps. Clearly, there is only one solution.

“No.” Kai tries to slam the door, but he holds it open, bracing his other arm against the doorframe and grinning at her. Something cold slides down her spine at that smile. It makes her nervous.

“Sorry,” he says, and his smile has too many teeth. It reminds her of the sharks at the aquarium, the ones that Sam had pointed out to her the last time they had gone. But sharks aren’t supposed to hurt you unless you do something stupid. She thinks that this guy isn’t like that. “I mean Sam. I’m an old friend of his. I was told he lived here.”

He knows Sam? For a moment, Kai hesitates. But Sam doesn’t have any friends, doesn’t _need_ any friends. He’s got her and Dex, and he’s never mentioned any skinny white guys with scary smiles. So she does exactly what he taught her to do when guys weren’t taking no for an answer.

“No!” Kai screams, loud enough that the neighbors probably heard her, and kicks him in the shin, driving him back enough for her to slam the door shut successfully He yells and calls her names as she locks the door and closes all the curtains in the house.

“You fucking brat!” He howls through the door, tugging at the doorknob so hard that she thinks she can feel the entire house shake.

“Go away!” She yells back, putting her hands on her hips because it makes her feel more brave, even if he can’t see her. “Or I’ll call the fucking cops!” That’s a lie--cops mean questions, means they might figure out that Mom’s gone, but the guy doesn’t know that.

She doesn’t know who he is, but she can _tell_ that whatever he wants with Sam, it’s nothing good. It’s the same kind of feeling she gets from Mom’s boyfriends. He’s trouble, and she doesn’t like it.

And she doesn’t get why he called Sam that weird name. The only other name Sam has is Ortez. And he doesn’t use that one that often either. She only knows it because it’s sewed onto the army uniform he keeps in his suitcase, that Kai found when she was snooping through his stuff.

She doesn’t like this one bit, but Sam and Dex can’t take calls at work, because of stupid rules.

So she keeps the door locked, and spends the rest of the day sitting on the couch with the big kitchen knife next to her, just in case the guy decides to come back.

* * *

 

Life has settled down. Locus is still an outsider in this town, but he is no longer quite a tourist. Dex and Kai have dragged him to the second hand stores, so his clothing is no longer so clearly military. Kai braids his hair in the mornings now, a luxury that he would never have imagined once. But he finds it oddly soothing, despite the old fears of having someone at his back.

“Why don’t you go stack the pomegranates?” Hasegawa says, smiling at him. His employer is elderly, and is always grateful for him for being able to carry heavy crates and the like. Being hired by her was a kindness that Locus had not expected, but she likes soldiers. Her daughters had all served, and none of them had made it back. So when she had realized he needed a job after the fourth time he had purchased groceries from her, she had hired him on the spot on those qualifications alone.

Locus nods and takes the crate of pomegranates up to the front, out the door, to the open air part of the store. Setting the crate down on the cheap carpet that the stands sit on, he begins to arrange them. It’s oddly soothing. It reminds him, in some ways, of cleaning his weapons. The motions are repetitive, and by now it’s routine. Just another part of this new life that he’s stumbled into.

Locus sees movement out of the corner of his eye, but he assumes it’s just another customer. It takes effort not to check, but he’s trying to overcome that habit. He’s not a soldier anymore. That life is lost to him, and this new, unfamiliar one is probably better, even if he in no way deserves it.

“Hey Locs.”

And just like that, his whole world is upended.

There is no mistaking the man in front of him as anyone but Felix. He looks good, comfortable even. His clothes are expensive looking and well-made, the colors and style easily marking him as a tourist. But Locus can’t mistake him for the harmless, clueless sort of tourists who wander around every day, or even the ordinary soldiers who visit the island. From just where he’s standing he can tell that Felix is armed. A pistol and two knives, at least. And there’s probably more. His body language is lethal in that completely familiar way that other soldiers lack. He’s dangerous and he does not care if other people know it.

Locus almost envies him the luxury of carrying weapons so confidently. Locus only carries a single knife, these days. He sold his gun months ago. It had seemed like the only option. They had needed the money and keeping a gun near Kai and Dex had seemed like a bad idea.

But he misses it, sometimes, the safety, the surety that even the small handgun had provided. His personal sniper rifle is still in storage on the mainland, but he hasn’t gone to fetch it, or any of his other personal effects. Those are a part of Locus the soldier, the bounty hunter’s life. He’s Sam now. Sam, an older brother, a grocer. There’s nothing there that could help them at all. The only thing that’s there are bad memories.

“Felix,” he says at last. He’s not sure how long he’d been standing there, just staring. Taking Felix in.

He had not expected to see Felix again. Their farewell had not had any indications of a reunion, devoid of sentiment or fondness. Felix had laughed and said good riddance as they had parted ways, and while Locus knew that Felix was a flippant creature, he had seen no reason that he would want to see Locus again. It is, after all, as Felix always says. The two of them get under each other’s skin. They bicker and fight and are incompatible everywhere. Without Siris there is no chance that they can work together, that they could even get along.

Felix laughs loudly and it’s a familiar sound, as familiar as the feeling of his armor around his body. “Look at you!” His eyes flicker to Locus’ apron and the slant of his grin tilts mockingly.

Locus feels his face heat up. His job pays well enough. Hasagawa is kind and lets him take home fruits and vegetables that would go bad otherwise. It pays the bills, it keeps Dex in school. But he knows how he looks to Felix and he can’t help but feel self-conscious about it.

Felix has always been good at making Locus feel like that.

For a moment, Locus misses his armor. He wishes he was able to hide his face from Felix’s gaze, which sees too much. Felix has always been too good at seeing him, and it makes Locus feel exposed in a way that goes deeper than the lack of armor.

“Why are you here?” He asks. It’s been months, after all. The time has passed with no word from Felix or Siris, or any of the others from their unit. His entire world has been Kai and Dex, and the people surrounding them.

“Looking for you, asshole!” Felix grins and steps closer to him. He seems... happy to see Locus, in a way which is baffling. “Come on, _partner_.” The way he says the word sends a shiver down Locus’ spine. “Let’s go get a drink.”

“I’m working,” Locus says automatically. He turns his attention back to the pomegranates. He knows where this is going. There is no way that Felix will accept that as an answer, but he refuses to endanger his job to cater to Felix’s whims.

Felix groans. “ _Fine_.” Locus pauses, surprised by the easy acceptance. “When do you get off?”

Locus hesitates, then shakes his head. “I have to go home afterwards.”

Felix’s face darkens. “Home?” He’s mocking him, Locus thinks. Mocking the idea that Locus could call anywhere home, could belong anywhere, as damaged as he is.

Locus feels his face warm in response, but he holds his ground. “Kaikaina and Dexter will be expecting me. For dinner.”

Felix scoffs, leaning against the stand of apples. He doesn’t question who Kaikaina or Dexter are. Perhaps he already knows, if he’d asked around enough to be able to track Locus down “Of course they are. Look at you! Pretending to be normal. It’s cute, Locus, really.” He sighs. “C’mon, throw me a bone here. I came all the way here to find you. You know, when I said go to Hawaii, I figured you’d be on a _beach_ , like a normal person, not in the process of adopting a couple of strays.”

Locus turns a pomegranate over in his hand. He had never seen the appeal of beaches. But he knew better than to say that to Felix, who would only laugh. “You could join us for dinner,” he says.

Felix laughs, loud and bright, tilting his head back and exposing his neck. “Sure,” he says when he can breathe again. “Sure. Let’s see what your little domestic fantasy looks like.”

“I get off at five,” Locus says.

Felix grins at him. There’s a pair of sunglasses perched on his forehead, threatening to fall. They’re the garish shade of orange that Felix had always worn for mercenary work. The color he had painted onto his weapons, his armor. The way that Locus had done the same with the gunmetal green. A color he hasn’t worn since meeting Kai.

Locus swallows and goes back to his work, letting Felix slip into the back of his mind again.

Dinner goes… oddly. Kai isn’t happy that Locus brought a friend back, staring with wide eyes as they enter the house, Felix’s hand lingering on Locus’ back. Which is strange. Kaikaina is always telling him to go out and make friends, to date, to do _something_. Locus thought that she’d be happy, that he had reconnected with an old… something. He isn’t sure of what words to use to describe Felix. Things are knotted, twisted, layered, and complicated, and Locus isn’t nearly eloquent enough to try to explain it to anybody, not even himself.

And of course, since Kai isn’t happy, Dex isn’t happy. His movements are short and jerky as he and Locus prepare dinner, like he is when the social worker is around. He doesn’t trust Felix. Not that Locus would have expected him to—it took Dex months to warm up to him. He’d have been more surprised if Dex _had_ trusted Felix, but the blatant hostility is odd.

“Why do you call Sam ‘Locus’?” Kai asks Felix loudly. She’s staring at him with narrowed eyes, and Felix is staring right back at her, scowling. He doesn’t know why Felix has decided that Kai’s enmity should be returned, but he has, and it’s already making Locus tired.

He tries to take comfort in the fact that Felix will not stay long. He will get bored and drift away again. But the thought isn’t comforting at all. Kai and Dex have given him a place that he had never thought possible, but they do not _understand_. They have never been to war, and if Locus has it his way, they never will. They don’t know what he sees when he closes his eyes at night, they don’t know why they’re not allowed to wake him when he screams in his sleep.

Felix understands. Better than anyone, he understands.

“It’s what we called him, during the war,” Felix says. He’s sticking his tongue out at Kai when Locus turns towards them.

“Felix!”

Felix pouts. “She started it!”

“She’s _twelve_ , asshole,” Dex says, pointing at Felix accusingly. “What’s your excuse?”

Felix’s scowl is ferocious. Locus bites back a comment about Felix having the maturity of a twelve year old. There is no need to make things worse by giving Kai and Dex further ammunition against Felix.

Dinner is awkward, stilted. Anything Locus wants to say, to ask, he doesn’t dare utter in front of Dex and Kai. The two of them don’t know him, don’t know the things he’s done. They know him as a brother, as a protector, as someone who looks after them, not as a murderer, a monster, a broken soldier. And he wants it to stay that way. He knows, deep in his bones, that if they learn who he really is, this will all shatter into a thousand pieces, far beyond repair.

Felix is right. He is only living a fantasy. But he has known this for a long time.

Felix gets stuck in the bathroom when they start to clean up from dinner. Locus can’t help but roll his eyes at the length Felix will go to in order to avoid simple tasks. He is a guest. Dex and Kai would not expect him to help.

“I’ll walk you back to your hotel,” Locus says, after the dishes are dried and put away.

“Sure,” Felix says with a grin, and there’s the familiar, heavy look in his eyes that says he wants something. But whatever it is, Locus doubts he’ll be getting it. Locus has a responsibility, even if he doesn’t deserve it. He can keep Dex in school, can help him get into college. If Dex can get into college, the draft won’t come for him like it came for Sam. Dex and Kai will never have to go to war. They won’t ever have to understand Locus’ nightmares.

And if he can manage that, Locus can live with everything else.

The second the front door closes behind them, Felix bursts into laughter. It’s cruel and howling, like he’s just seen a hilarious joke at someone else’s expense. Locus keeps walking, knowing Felix will catch up. He can’t mock Locus if Locus can’t hear him. There’s no fun in that.

“That was _adorable_ ,” Felix says, and he puts his arm through Locus’, in a gesture that’s oddly intimate. “I’ve gotta admit, I didn’t think you’d be able to pretend to be normal long enough to pull something like that!”

Locus doesn’t dignify that with a response.

“Have you heard from Siris?” He asks. There’s a longing in his chest—Siris and Megan would like Dex and Kai. Their oldest is about Kai’s age, too.

Felix snorts. “I visited. And then Siris threw me out.”

Locus draws to a halt. “What?”

“He said he didn’t want reminders of the war,” Felix says. “He wants to be _normal_ , move _on_. But that’s so bullshit.” His fingernails dig into Locus’ arm, but Locus doesn’t react, because he can’t feel anything. He’s completely numb, and the taste in his mouth is bitter. “After what he did? What _we_ did? He can pretend, sure, but it’s all going to fucking fall to pieces and he knows it.”

Siris had thrown Felix out and would surely do the same to him. Locus wants to do something ridiculous. He wants to cry or scream or punch something, anything besides just standing there with a heavy heart. He feels like he should be mourning something, but what is there to mourn? He had already known this; had known that he would be unwelcome in Siris’ life. He is too dangerous to be around children—

He forces himself to stop that line of thought.

He has promised Dex he’ll stay. He will keep that promise until the day comes that he becomes a danger to them. He is capable of that much, at least. He will be able to leave when he needs to protect them from himself.

The two of them keep walking. It’s a beautiful night, but Locus can’t appreciate it. The world feels heavier, somehow, pressing down on him and threatening to suffocate him.

“I leave tomorrow,” Felix says.

Locus pauses, surprised. He would have thought he would wish to stay longer, after the fuss he made of coming all this way just to find Locus. “I see.”

“Got a job,” Felix says, and in the darkness, it’s easy to imagine there’s blood on his teeth as he grins. “Out in the colonies. Pays well. Some people need help, apparently one of our old contacts gave them my name.” He nudges Locus in the side. “What do you say, Locus? Want to join me?”

Locus doesn’t say anything. His mind goes back, to their bounty hunter days. The world, tinted through green glasses, the feeling of a gun in his hands. Felix, a familiar presence by his side, his voice in his ear. Doing what he is good at, if he can’t be a soldier, at least he could still do _something_.

But...

“I can’t,” Locus says.

Felix looks at him, bewildered. He hadn’t expected Locus to turn him down, Locus realizes distantly. This was why he had come, to collect Locus for a job. It hadn’t been a social visit after all. It had been business. “What do you mean?”

“I have a job,” Locus says, trying to keep his voice even and firm. He knows he cannot give Felix a single inch.

Felix snorts. “Yeah, wearing that frilly little apron and making pyramids out of fruit! How’s that working out for you? Paid in pennies I bet. You could _do something_ , out there. We were the best, remember? Imagine the shit we can do now!” He grins at Locus. “Bet we can get you some new armor. This job pays well enough we don’t have to settle for shitty stuff, either. I heard there’s a new Locus model coming out,” he adds, a tantalizing tidbit that Locus had not heard.

There’s a part of Locus that wants to. To go back to what is familiar; watching Felix’s back, the solid heft of his rifle on his back, the feeling of being encased in armor. To be Locus again, instead of Sam. A proper soldier, following orders.

But Kai and Dex need him. So he shakes his head.

Something furious flashes across Felix’s face for a moment, bright and dangerous and familiar. Locus reaches for a gun he no longer carries, half afraid, in that moment, of what Felix might do.

But then Felix shakes his head and laughs, a short, bitter sound. “You’ve gone soft on me,” he accuses. He stares up at Locus’ face, as if challenging him to say differently or to prove him wrong.

“They need me,” Locus says.

Felix snorts. “ _Sure_ they do. Don’t they have real parents somewhere?”

“That is not your concern,” Locus says. He doesn’t know the full details about Cora Grif. He’s seen photographs and heard a few stories. He knows that she is gone, and that when she was around, that she was not necessarily the best of parents. He knows that she hasn’t seen her children in well over a year, and that Dex doesn’t think she’s coming back this time. He knows even less about their father, not even a name. They have no cousins, no grandparents, no aunts or uncles to look after them. It had just been the two of them for a very long time before Locus had stumbled into their lives.

“Touchy, touchy,” Felix says, tilting his head to one side, considering. “Well. This is my stop.” It’s one of the luxurious hotels near the beaches, lit up so brightly that the stars are obscured. “I’ll stop by next time I’m planetside.” He winked at Locus.

“Very well,” Locus says. He doesn’t say that he’d like that, even though they both know it’s true.

He hadn’t realized until he’d seen Felix that he’d been lonely. It’s wrong, he knows, when he had Kai and Dex, but he is. He hates that he does not feel satisfied, despite all the wonderful things that he has been handed in life. But seeing Felix has opened those old wounds, wounds that Locus knows can’t be healed. He is broken.

“Here,” Felix pulls out a pen and scribbles something onto Locus’ hand. “If you change your mind about the job. Call me.”

“I won’t,” Locus says. He pulls his hand back.

“A guy can dream,” Felix says lightly. He turns back and walks into the hotel, leaving Locus’ life once again.

* * *

 

When Sam comes back and says that Felix is leaving Hawaii, Grif wants to scream “thank _god_ ” from the top of a very tall building.

It’s been a long time since Grif’s met anyone who’s as slimy as Felix. The guy practically reeks of grossness, and that’s not even counting the fact that he came to the house looking for Sam first.

Well, not Sam.

Locus.

“So who was he anyways?” Grif asks. Kai’s in bed, but he’s doing his homework on the kitchen table. Sam’s not much help with most things, but he’s good at physics.

“We served together,” Sam says. It sounds automatic; a rehearsed answer. Or maybe it’s just been asked so many times that Sam can give it without thinking.

Grif glares at his notes. “That’s a bullshit answer,” he says. “You served with a lot of people. Who was _he_?”

Sam sighs, and wow, he looks old all of a sudden. Old and really, really tired, like he sometimes looks after he has those really bad nights that usually end with them finding him on the floor, tangled in the blankets. They’ve been having him pose as Mom’s boyfriend when Social Services comes to call, but this is the first time that he looks like he’s old enough to be one.

“We’ve known each other a long time,” Sam says. “I—I suppose we’re friends.” He sounds hesitant, like he’s not sure he believes it.

“You suppose?” Grif demands, because Sam brought a fucking stranger into their house and didn’t ask first, and sure, he didn’t know about Kai locking the guy out, but that wasn’t the _point_. Grif usually lets Sam not answer questions about the war, or about basically anything. Sam doesn’t like talking about himself much; he likes to sidestep when he can, and sometimes he even just walks out. But this is _important_. If that guy isn’t coming back, Grif is the fucking Queen of Mars. He needs more information.

“We were… close,” Sam says. “We trusted each other.” He says it in a quiet way, like it’s precious. Like if he admits it out loud, it’s exposing it to the elements, and it might be shattered in the process.

“Was he your boyfriend or something?”

“… something.”

Grif groans.

It’s not fair on Sam, he knows, to try to keep him away his friends. He doesn’t really have anyone who isn’t Grif or Kai.

But Grif really, _really_ doesn’t like Felix. There’s something about him, especially how he talks to Sam, that Grif doesn’t like. Especially not the way that Sam reacts when Felix calls him “Locus”. Like he’s been slapped, or doused with ice water, or… or something. Like the earth is moving beneath his feet, and Sam isn’t quite sure he even wants to get out of the way.

When Sam had left with Felix, Grif hadn’t been entirely sure that he would come back. Here it was, finally. Sam’s ticket out of here, his reason to leave.  Kai hadn’t doubted that Sam would come back, because she _always_ thought that people would come back, but Grif knew better. He’d sat vigil by the big window, just watching, waiting to see if Sam finally proved that he was exactly like everyone else.

But he’d come back. He’d come back with a weird expression and a sad face, but he’d come back. Not that Sam ever really looks happy, but he’d looked sadder than normal. Even now, moving about the kitchen in the motions of winding down the day, he looks thoughtful, his movements slow and quiet.

“Is he coming back?” Please, please, please say no. Say he’s going to stay far away from Hawaii, that he hated it here. Grif would give just about anything to never have to deal with him again. Surely Sam had other friends, better friends. Friends who Kai didn’t hate so much she’d lock him in the bathroom.

Sam hesitates. “I think so.”

Grif looks down at all the homework he’s doing. The problems all seem to blur together as he tries to think. There has to be something he can do, some compromise he can strike. Keeping people safe but not making Sam hate him by being the guy who won’t let him bring his old war/fuck-buddy over.

“Just… don’t let him stay the night, okay?” There. That will have to work. Keep him as far away from Kai as he can justify, while not making Sam get rid of him altogether. He wants him to be happy. But he doesn’t think Felix should be a part of that.

“Very well,” Sam says. He doesn’t even seem upset about it, which is kind of reassuring. He places a hand on Grif’s shoulder and Grif sighs, leaning into the touch.  

Felix leaves the next morning, and Sam doesn’t even go to see him off. Things go back to normal. Grif goes to school, Sam goes to work, after school Grif goes to work, Kai keeps getting into trouble and going to school. They spend time together at nights. They play board games and watch shitty movies, and Grif and Kai work on convincing Sam that he should stop sleeping on the couch.

These are some of the best times that Grif’s had since Mom left for the first time, before everything started to fall to shit.

And then, three weeks after Felix goes away, Mom comes back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters just keep getting longer on me, I swear. 
> 
> More Felix nonsense this chapter, and we move to explicitly romantic/sexual Lolix at the end. Not the fluffy kind either. Plus Mama Grif is a bit of a character. I'm pretty sure what's happening here mostly falls under "neglect", but if you think I should tag as something else, please let me know.

Mom always comes back the same way. The door is thrown open, the smell of the ocean fills the entire house, and she crashes back into their lives in a burst of color and sound.

“I’m home!” She yells, like she’d just been at work all day instead of having been missing for the better part of a year. Normally she leaves for a three or four months, staying for a month or two at a time. When she hadn’t come back last time, Grif had been pretty sure she wasn’t coming back this time.  

Grif stares.

“Mom!” Kai stumbles forward, arms outstretched, and Mom picks her up and spins her around, laughing.

“Oh look at you! You got even prettier than you were when I left!”

Grif moves forward without thinking, feeling almost numb. She swoops down, wrapping her arms around him and kissing his cheek. For a second, Grif lets himself forget everything, just hugs her back and buries his face in her shirt and pretends he’s a kid again. That it’s before Mom started leaving and things started getting bad.

“You got so tall!” She says, pulling back.

Something hot and angry pulses in his chest. He wants to ask her where she’s been, why she was gone so long, and why, why did she come back _now_ , when he’s mostly stopped missing her and Kai’s stopped asking when she’s coming back.

But he doesn’t want to ruin this for Kai, who looks so freaking _happy_ , so he smiles as best he can.

“Oh, I missed you both so much,” she says, wrapping her arms around both of them. “Oh! Dex, honey, why don’t you go get my bag from the porch? I’ve got presents!”

“Awesome!” Kai cheers, while Grif, following this old routine, ducks outside and goes to get the luggage.

It’s not the suitcase Mom had when she left; this one is new and expensive, with her initials embroidered on the side. Grif pulls it in obediently, towards the kitchen table where Mom is sitting.

“Bring it over here, baby,” Mom says. She looks like Kai way more than she looks like him. She’s pretty when she’s happy, her eyes almost disappearing when she smiles, her hair long, dark, and curly. She’s wearing brightly colored clothes, ones that Grif hasn’t seen before. New, fancy earrings gleam in her ears.

She unzips the bag with a flourish, and the gifts start. T-shirts and postcards from all the places she’s been, action figures for Grif and dolls for Kai, books and movies for both of them. Pretty things, sparkling things, and sometimes even expensive things.

It’s easy to get swept up in it all. The glamor of Mom, freshly home. Happy and bright and loving. It’s easy to pretend they haven’t played this out a thousand times over.

It’s easy to forget that Sam is due home, and so when the door opens and he walks in, Grif is actually surprised for a second.

Sam has his arm full of groceries, because it’s Friday and he always brings home groceries on Friday. He’s wearing one of those ugly brightly patterned shirts that Kai likes to make him wear. His eyes flicker around the room, taking them all in.

“Who are you?” Mom demands.

Sam looks at Grif and Kai. He looks completely at a loss for what to do here. They’ve never told him about Mom, not really. He’s never asked, either. They had no reason to think she was coming back. “I’m… Sam.” He moves his eyes back to Mom, and tries to do his awkwardly polite thing that usually works. “You must be their mother.” He nods respectfully.

“Damn right I am,” Mom snaps, getting to her feet. She’s almost two feet shorter than Sam, but somehow she seems larger than him in this moment as she takes a few intimidating steps towards him. “How the hell did you get into my house?”

“Mom,” Kai hisses, tugging on her sleeve. “Be cool! Sam lives here.”

And just like that, happy just-got-home Mom vanishes.

“ _What_?”

Kai immediately realizes she’s screwed up, but she’s not about to back down either. So Grif speaks up.

“Mom, it’s fine,” he says. “Sam’s… he’s okay. Really.”

“Dexter Grif,” she says. “Are you telling me you let this man _stay in the house_?” Her fingernails dig into his shoulder. “How do you know him?”

“He helped Kai!”  
“And he buys you groceries?” Mom

But Mom has spotted the sheets on the couch, and storms forward. Sam is a pretty scary looking guy, but he’s never looked less so than this moment, cowed by this small woman, shoulders hunched like he’s trying to make himself less of a target, eyes darting from her back to Grif and Kai. He looks miserable and lonely, just like he did on that first day when Kai had brought him home.

“You let this man sleep in the same house as my baby girl?” She shrieks at Grif. “You don’t even know him!”

Once, that might have worked. But Sam has protected Kai so often, has helped them out so often. Things have been _good_ , these past few months, and Sam hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s one of the only people who Grif knows would never hurt Kai, and _Mom_ isn’t even on that list.

Sam is _family_. Of course Grif let him stay.

“Mom!” Kai yells back.

“You buy them groceries?” She looks at Sam, standing between him and them. “What else?”

“I...”

“What. Else.”

“It’s...” Sam seems to be floundering here. “Our agreement...”

“ _Agreement_?”

“It’s not like that, Mom,” Grif feels sick to his stomach. “Mom, just _listen_.”

“No,” she says. “ _You_ listen.” She turns her back on him, and turns to Sam again. “Get out of here,” Mom says, practically shaking as she points her finger at Sam. “Get _out_! If I ever see you near my children, I’ll call the police! I don’t know what it is you want from my children, but you’re not going to get it, you _monster_!”

Sam flinches, and the groceries tumble out of his hands.

“Sam!” Kai says, reaching out a hand like she could somehow stop what’s about to happen.

But it’s like that first night all over again. Sam gives them a wide-eyed, terrified look, but it’s different this time, because this time he’s actually scared of something _real_ , and this time Grif _cares_ , and Sam darts back out the front door, leaving the groceries behind.

Grif quietly moves forward and starts picking them up. Tucked in one of the bags is Sam’s paycheck. He quickly stuffs it in his pocket. He’ll give it back to Sam when he sees him again.

Mom glares at him as Kai comes over to help him. “I thought I taught you better,” she says, her voice still high and shaking. “You should _never_ have let someone like that into our house.”

“Someone like what?” Grif demands.

Mom stares at him. “Anyone who willingly stays with a couple of kids instead of getting their own place wants _something_ , Dex.” There’s disgust on her face. “People like that shouldn’t be near kids.”

“Why?” Kai demands, not looking at Mom. Her face is covered in tear tracks. The happiness of Mom coming home is already shattered, and Grif _hates_ Mom for that. Her coming home makes Kai happy, so he always wants her to come home, but she can’t even do _that_ right.

“They’re dangerous, baby.” And that’s all Mom has to say on the subject. And then it’s like a storm has passed, the anger and disgust on her face clearing up, replaced by normal, just-got-home Mom face. “Once you get those things cleaned up, let’s go out for dinner!” She’s happy again, like nothing has happened. Like she didn’t just throw Sam out of the house and ruin everything.

Grif swallows and helps Kai start to put things in the cupboard. “Okay Mom,” he says.

Kai squeezes his hand as Mom disappears into her room. “What are we going to do?”

“I...” Grif stares out the window, looking for some sign of Sam.

“She’ll be gone soon,” Kai says,quietly. Grif nearly jumps out of his skin He never says that to Kai, even if it’s true. So hearing her say that... kind of hurts. “She’ll leave, and then Sam can come back. It’s all going to be fine. Right?” Her eyes are still bright and shiny, but she puts on a determined look.

“If he sticks around that long,” Grif mutters. Mom usually only stays a few months; he might not want to stay.

“He will if we find him tonight and tell him that,” she says stubbornly.

“Right,” Grif nods, even if he doesn’t quite believe it. “After Mom’s asleep.”

Dinner is great. It’s at some fancy place by the seaside, and the food is way better than anything that Grif can make on his own. Mom pays for everything, and she didn’t even touch the money jar before they left the house. Grif doesn’t ask where Mom got the money—she always has money when she comes back. It’s when it runs out that things get bad, Grif knows this song.

After she’s asleep, they sneak out.

Sam’s not very far away, on a park bench near the house. Dex knows instinctively that he’s been there since Mom threw him out. Probably with the exact same expression too.

Grif shoves his paycheck at him. “Here. You’ll need this.”

Sam shakes his head, but Grif doesn’t let up. “Dumbass, you’ve got to find a place to stay until Mom leaves!”

Kai clambers onto the bench and hugs Sam.

Sam’s not big on hugs, that’s the thing. He shrinks away from human contact most of the time. Especially when he’s in one of his quiet moods, where he looks like the world has chewed him up and spat him out. But slowly, ever so slowly, he relaxes into Kai’s grip, awkwardly hugging her back as best as he can with the awkward way she’s got his arms pinned at his sides.

“You’ll come back, right?” She says. “When Mom leaves? You’ll move back in?” Grif swallows. Kai isn’t supposed to think like that. She’s supposed to think things are going to be okay, that Mom loves them enough to stay. But she knows the truth. And that sucks.

He looks baffled, as if the idea of them wanting him back doesn’t make sense. “If… if you want.”

“Of course that’s what she wants,” Grif says, sitting down on the bench next to him. He scuffs his feet on the ground. “And me,” he adds, quietly. He doesn’t look at Sam or Kai.

“… very well,” Sam says. He takes the check from Grif. “I’ll… see what I can find.”

“It won’t be long,” Grif says. “She never stays long.” When the money runs out, when the bills get to be too much, when she gets bored with being a mom again, she leaves. It’s been like that since she lost her old job, working in one of the factories. Things were... better, at least, before then. But now, the routine is set. There will be a new job, a new opportunity, a new boyfriend, and she’ll leave in a flurry of tears and kisses and then be gone again.

Sam nods slowly. “You two should go home,” he says. “I’ll tell you when I find somewhere to stay.”

The walk home feels long, even with Kai holding his hand.

After Kai goes to bed, Grif carefully takes apart the bed on the couch where Sam has been staying. He packs away every trace of Sam, puts it in a box which he hides in his room. The photograph of the three of them at the grocery store where Sam works, Sam’s razor and hairbrush, the collection of elastics that Kai used to braid his hair, the second-hand books he read. If Mom found them, she’d probably throw them away. This way, they’ll still be here when Sam comes back.

Kai cries in the morning when she realizes it’s all been put away, but Grif just hugs her.

It’s not fair. Kai isn’t supposed to know that Mom coming back isn’t always a good thing. That’s Grif’s job. Kai’s supposed to be a _kid_ , who doesn’t realize that Mom leaves because things are too hard, who doesn’t realize that Mom isn’t always a good person.

Sam finds an apartment easily enough, but for all its lack of amenities, rent isn’t cheap on Hawaii. There’s less money for him to give to Kai and Dex every week. There are now four mouths to feed instead of three, and Mom never pitches in money for the bills or groceries, even though she’s still clearly got money. When Grif brings it up, she tells him to take the money from the savings account, which has been depleted for years. She talks about Dad’s child-support checks like they’re in the present tense, pretending that things are fine. She always does this, pretending everything is fine, that there’s always enough money for her to do her stupid shit instead of pinching pennies.

But despite everything, it’s looks like they’re going to be okay without her pitching in, because they’ve still got chunks of Sam’s paychecks.  

She rarely eats at home, and brings Kai and Grif out to dinner about twice a week. At first, this is okay because hey, if Grif doesn’t have to pay for that, it’s fine, even if Sam’s rent eats up more than they’re saving. But then money starts to disappear from the jar.

One night, when she’s gone, Grif checks under the bed in her room. There are empty glass bottles there, neatly arranged so they won’t roll around too much.

He goes to Sam’s apartment that night, with all the bills. Normally, they’d do this at the kitchen table, but Sam’s still not allowed in the house, despite Kai’s begging. So they do it on Sam’s battered couch, heads bowed as they crunch numbers.

“I need to start working more,” Grif says, staring at all the minus signs.  

Sam looks like he wants to argue, but he doesn’t, because he knows that Grif is right. There’s a mortgage payment that they don’t have enough for at the moment, and there’s no other way to make up the difference. He needs more hours. And if that means skipping school, then it means skipping school. “Just for now,” he says.

Grif picks up more hours, and things get better for a little while. Mom’s still taking money out of the jar, but it’s not too much, and they can handle it.

That’s when she gets a new boyfriend.

They never meet him. “Isaac doesn’t like kids,” she tells them, wrinkling her nose, like she can’t quite help but agree with him on that front. There are more and more bottles under her bed and the money in the jar goes faster and faster. She’s drinking again. Grif stops putting money in there, hiding it in his closet and under Kai’s mattress instead, but Mom’s always got a nose for finding whatever cash they leave in the house, so even that’s not safe.

Mom’s out late most nights, and sometimes she doesn’t come back. Grif and Kai spend more and more time at Sam’s apartment. Kai pretends she’s at a friend’s house when Mom asks, and Grif just says he’s at work. If Mom suspects, she doesn’t say anything.

“You two should go home,” Sam says. The old TV is rolling the credits of the movie they’d just been watching. “She’ll be wondering where you are.”

Kai lets out a groan, burying her face in Sam’s shirt. “Can we stay here? _Please_?”

“Your mother will be home soon,” he says.

“Nooooo,” Kai groans.

“She won’t,” Grif says. “She brought her overnight bag. She’s staying at her boyfriend’s place tonight.”

Sam hesitates, but then he smiles slightly. “Very well. You two take the bed—”

“Noooo,” Kai clings tightly. “You too.”

“Besides,” Grif says. “The couch is _way_ too small for you.”

Sam looks terrified for a moment, but agrees.

Sam’s bed is a double, barely big enough for all three of them, but they manage okay. Grif is pressed against the wall and Kai is almost hanging off the edge, with Sam sandwiched between them, because there’s no way he won’t sneak up and go to the couch if they don’t trap him completely. It’s like back home, when they’d used to fall asleep on the couch, limbs all tangled together.

“Night, Sam,” Grif says, already halfway asleep.

“… goodnight.”

When Grif wakes up in the morning, Sam is sound asleep. He didn’t wake up screaming at all.

A week later, everything goes to shit even more. Because Mom’s boyfriend gets arrested. And Mom bails him out without even blinking.  

The problem is, they don’t have money for that. Grif doesn’t know what exactly it is the boyfriend _did_ , but the bail is high. Mom’s bailed out boyfriends before, but it’s never been this much. There’s not enough in the jar to even come close. Mom doesn’t have enough either. She clears out the jar anyway, and takes out a loan.

Even years later, Grif is pretty sure he can never forgive her for that.

* * *

 

Locus is tired.

He’s been tired a lot lately. Cora Grif’s return has changed everything. Locus has been trying to pick up additional work on top of his hours at Hasegawa’s, and Dex has been skipping school constantly to try to make ends meet. But all that work doesn’t change anything.

The loan Cora Grif took is quickly accumulating interest, and Locus has his doubts about them ever seeing the money again, despite Cora’s reassurances to Dex and Kai. They’re falling behind on bills, and fast.

“I don’t know what to do,” Dex says, and he looks far too young to be dealing with this. “Even when she _leaves,_ we’ll have to pay this off.”

Locus shifts through the stack of bills, feeling numb. It’s too much money.

Once, he wouldn’t have flinched at these numbers. It was a job or two, and that was it. That was all it would have taken, and then this problem would have gone away.

Now, working on a grocer’s salary and no savings to speak of—it was all gone by the end of the war, gone to medical bills and useless therapy—things seem so much more grim.

But…

He has the numbers that had been scrawled on the back of his hand memorized.

Felix had said that he would help him find work if he changed his mind.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” Locus says, and he goes outside. It’s getting late—Dex will have to be getting home shortly. Kai will probably be coming by after her volleyball practice, but he can’t let them eat here tonight.

He calls the number.

It rings and rings, and for a moment, Locus thinks that Felix had been playing another great joke on him, giving him this fake number for false hope.

But he answers.

“Hello?”

“Felix.”

“ _Locus_!” He can just imagine the wide smile that’s cutting across Felix’s face. “You never call, you never write! What can I do for you?”

“Is the offer still open?” Locus’ mouth feels like it’s full of sand. Kai and Dex might never forgive him for this.

Felix laughs. “I knew you’d change your mind! Sure, I’ve got a two-job contract coming up. I was shopping around for a partner, but we work better together than any of those losers.”

Two jobs. Sam feels sick, even though he knows that they could use the money from both. “What’s the time frame?”

“Two weeks for the first. We’ve got a month off after that, then one week. So I guess you can visit those kids.”

Seven weeks. Seven weeks, and then he walks away, and can try to fix things with Dex and Kai. He hopes they will understand, that they can forgive him for this. If not…

He’ll have made sure they’re provided for, at the very least.

“When do we leave?”

“I’ll be on the next flight,” Felix says. He sounds happier than Locus has heard him in years. “Meet me at the airstrip at midnight tomorrow.”

So soon. A quiet dread sinks into his skin. “Very well.”

“See you then, Locus.”

“Yes.” He hangs up, and sags against the wall of the alley he made the call in. “You are a soldier,” he tells himself. “This is nothing different.”

This is for them. To protect them. They have survived without him for years and years. They can handle seven weeks without him.

The stars shine brightly above him, almost mockingly as he heads back inside. Up the stairs, each one seeming to take an eternity as he tries to decide what it is he’s going to say to them.

“I have a solution,” Sam says quietly as he returns to the apartment. Grif is flipping through one of his textbooks, having given up on the bills. Kai is here now too, sprawled on the floor and playing with her phone, laughing at whatever it is she’s doing.

They both look up at him eagerly. “What? What is it?” Dex asks. He’s more intense than Kai is; he knows that there are no easy solutions, knows there will be a cost for an answer to their problems.

“You won’t like it.” He takes a breath, staring at the wall between them rather than letting himself make eye contact. “Felix… offered me a job.” Dex’s face goes dark and Kai yelps. “It pays… well. Very well. I’d be gone a few weeks.”

“You’re _leaving_?” They say together.

“Just for a while,” Locus says, almost pleading. “But we could probably pay back this loan if I do that. Before things get worse.”

“But you _can’t_ leave!” Kai says. Her eyes are large and watery, and Locus makes himself look away. “You _can’t_!”

Locus shakes his head. “I’ll be back,” he says. “It’s just two weeks.” Then he’ll have to leave again, but he’ll break that to them later.

Kai bursts into tears, and Dex goes to comfort her. Locus stays standing in the doorway, feeling like he’s intruding.

“Promise you’ll come back?” Kai demands, staring up at him from Dex’s arms. “ _Promise_?”

“Yes,” Locus says. “I’ll be home before you know it.”

Kai launches herself at him and cries into his shoulder. Dex is just about expressionless, hunching in on himself as Kai cries herself out.

“Guess I did break the deal first,” he says to Locus distantly as Locus goes about cooking for them. He hadn’t planned on letting them stay, but he leaves tomorrow. He’ll have to ask Hasegawa if he’ll be able to have the time off or if he’ll need to give notice. He’s good on rent at least, but there is so much to do tomorrow, to prepare for his departure.

“I’ll be back,” Locus says again. “It’s only two weeks.”

“Yeah,” Dex says, taking the bowl of curry from him. “I guess.”

He knows that no amount of promises or reassurances will help Dex in this moment. But hopefully he will understand, when Locus comes back, _why_ he had to leave.

They don’t ask him what kind of job it is he’s going to do with Felix, for which Locus is incredibly grateful. Maybe they both know that it’s a question they _don’t_ want an answer to; they can tell, somehow, that his hands are only going to get bloodier.

“Look after each other,” he says to them. He doesn’t let them go with him to the air strip. He doesn’t want them to see Felix again. They follow him anyways, but at a distance, and Locus pretends he doesn’t see them. If he turns around and sees them, he might stay, and damn the consequences.

But the consequences are real; losing the house, social services realizing that Cora Grif isn’t fit to be a parent, and then the two of them will be dragged into the system, possibly even separated. Out of Locus’s reach; he’s nowhere near qualified to be a foster parent. No one with a record like his should be allowed near children. Even Cora Grif knows that.

“You’ve got shadows,” Felix observes, leaning against the door to the pelican. He’s in civilian clothing.

“I know.” He gets in, ignoring the racing of his heart. The door closes behind him as Felix slips into the pilot’s seat. Locus gets in the co-pilot seat, and the engines begin to roar.

Locus looks, but he can’t see Kai and Dex through the darkness. The pelican turns and begins to head towards space.

“Got a present for you,” Felix says, once they’ve made it through the atmosphere. “It’s in the back.”

Locus gets out of his seat and goes to investigate. He expects a sniper rifle, which he finds in the case. It’s a good model, top of the line. It’s familiar in his hands, and Felix has had it customized. A green stripe runs along it, marking it as his. Locus goes to the next case, and freezes as he sees what’s inside it.

Locus armor in grey and green, the familiar X crossing the visor.

“Figured we should do this in style,” Felix says. And even though Locus isn’t facing him, he can see the smirk on his face. “Suit up. We’ll be there soon, and I need to get changed too.”

Locus picks up the helmet, holding it in his hands gingerly. He doesn’t know why he feels so apprehensive, looking at it. He’s missed this, the strength and protection of the armor, the security of his rifle across his back. So why is he hesitating?

“Will you stop fucking spacing out?”  Felix demands from the front of the ship. “Stop jerking off about your armor and get _ready_!”

The new armor is more advanced than anything Locus has experienced before. It encases him perfectly, protecting him. The rifle is the perfect weight in his hands, and Locus instinctively knows that shooting with it will be as simple as breathing. Felix knows his preferences all too well.

Felix stands next to him, comfortable in his Scout armor. He slaps Locus across the back, a laugh in his voice.

“Come on, partner,” he says, and Locus feels something fall into place at that. He can do this.

For Dex, for Kai, he can do this.

The job is bloody and exhausting, but it goes relatively smoothly. They’re protecting a ship from rival pirates, and the worst of it comes when it turns out that one of the people on their ship is working for the enemy.

Locus is sleeping, not dreaming for once. A hand clenches around his throat, another presses over his mouth and nose, trying to stop him from crying out.

She’s smart, he realizes as he lurches awake and realizes what’s happening. She’s managed to find the knife under his pillow and moved it out of his reach,

But Locus is stronger than her, even now, breathless and just awake and confused. His hand finds her throat.

Felix bursts in moments later, knife in his hand. “Locus! We’ve got a—oh.” His laugh makes Locus’ skin crawl. “I guess you found her.”

Locus drags his hands down his face. “She tried to kill me,” he says. His throat aches.

“What happened to sleeping in your armor?” Felix says, kicking the corpse. “You really have gone soft.”

His face burns but he says nothing. He doesn’t take his armor off for the rest of the job.

Finally, the job ends, and Locus heads back home. The first part of the payment has already been transferred to his account. It’s not quite enough to pay off everything, but that’s why it’s two jobs. After this, he’ll be done.

He doesn’t dare call the house, concerned that Cora is still home and might answer. So instead, he goes to his apartment first.

Dex and Kai are there, doing their homework. Kai is sprawled across his bed, her feet on the wall, while Dex is on the couch, legs crossed. They’re okay. Things were fine without him. He feels himself smiling for the first time in two weeks.  “I’m back,” he says, simply, letting his bag fall to the floor with a thump. He’d left the armor and the sniper rifle with Felix. He won’t need them for another month.

Kai lets out a delighted cry, leaps off the bed and tackles him in a hug. “Sam!” She’s almost thirteen now, and she’s strong, her grip on his ribs slightly too tight, but Locus doesn’t mind at all, hugging her back. He’s missed this. Missed them. Dex is there too in a moment.

“You came back,” Dex says, almost unbelieving.

“I said I would.”

Something changes in Dex’s eyes, softening ever-so-slightly. “Yeah. I guess you did.”

He should tell them that he has to leave again in a month, but he can’t, not now.

He buys dinner for them all, take out from one of their favorite places, and they sit on his couch and eat, watching one of the terrible movies that Dex is so fond of. He learns that Cora is still around. She broke up with her boyfriend, who refuses to pay her back for the bond money. Dex is still working far too much, and looks far too stressed.

Locus hopes the money will help.

The month passes quickly. Locus feels like he’s nervous the whole time, always checking over his shoulder. His nightmares are back with a vengeance, and he wakes up on the floor more often than not. His neighbors have complained to him multiple times. But none of that matters. The first part of the money helps. It pays off a large chunk of the debt, makes it seem almost reasonable. The second part should pay off the rest, Felix has assured him of that.  

Dex and Kai aren’t happy that he has to leave again, but they understand better this time. And it’s only for one week, and then he’s done for good.

He works at Hasegawa’s, stacking oranges and arranging pineapples, and when he gets pomegranate juice on his hands, he panics, thinking it’s blood. Luckily, no one is there to see him draw his knife in a panic.

He walks Kai back from school, stopping a block away from the house. There are still bills to pay. Dex is still skipping school, and refuses to stop until the second part of the job is done.

“Just… be careful?” Dex asks, peeling potatoes as they make dinner together. “I know you trust Felix but… I don’t like this.”

“I know. I’ll be home soon.”

“Not soon enough.”

“… I know.”

This time, Locus lets them walk him to the air field. Kai French-braids his hair and sticks a flower behind his ear. Dex just scowls as they walk there, hands deep in his pockets.

“One week?” Kai asks as they walk there. The air field had once been part of a military base, but it’s abandoned now. It’s a bit of a trek out from the city, but Kai and Dex had insisted on coming with, not content to say their goodbyes at his apartment.

“One week.”

Felix is waiting for them, sitting on the roof of the pelican. “Sam!” Hearing his given name from Felix’s mouth will always be a strange experience. “Brats.”

Kai sticks her tongue out at him immediately, and Sam resists the urge to smile. Felix would never give him a moment’s rest over it if he did.

“I’ll be home soon,” Locus says again. Kai hugs him. Dex does not. But he offers Locus a smile.

“See you next week, you jerk.”

“You too.” He gets into the pelican, with Felix. .

“You’re such a sap,” Felix says, after the doors are closed. “What the fuck is that in your hair?”

Locus takes the flower out and lets it fall to the ground. It was yellow and beautiful, the petals crinkled and soft.  

“Got something way better suited for your complexion in the crate,” Felix says, stomping up to the front to start their journey. “Green looks much better on you, wouldn’t you say?”

Locus doesn’t respond. Instead, he takes the elastic out of his hair and undoes Kai’s careful handiwork. “Focus on the mission,” is all he has to say.

“Aw, there you are Locs!” Felix’s grin is all too pleased with himself. “I was wondering where you were.”

Locus redoes his hair into a simple ponytail, then puts on the armor.

“This one’s an easy one,” Felix says, when Locus joins him in the cockpit.

“How so?”

Felix’s smile could mean only one of two things; wanton murder or sex. And either way, Locus feels himself go cold.

“Kill box,” he says. “No survivors.”

Locus feels himself nodding. “Simple.”

It’s not.

Everything goes wrong. The enemy knows they’re coming, they’re prepared. There are traps everywhere. Felix gets hurt. And halfway through the week, an enemy tries to use a civilian child as a human shield.

“Fucking _do it_!” Felix is bleeding out and needs help. Locus has no choice. He needs Felix. They need each other. They’re _partners_. He couldn’t let him die any more than he could let something happen to Kai or Dex.

Locus pulls the trigger.

The child doesn’t make it. Felix does.

Locus throws up afterwards, which he hasn’t done since his very first battle. “Locus,” Felix whispers in his ear. “ _Locus_.”

“I’m fine,” Locus lies automatically. “I’m fine.”

Felix laughs at the audacity of it all. “Job’s done,” he says. “Pelican’s down though—one of them got it.”

Locus picks up his helmet. “Very well,” he says. “We’ll fix it in the morning.”

The two of them sleep next to each other in the pelican. There’s a familiarity to this, from the war. Sleeping in full armor, Siris keeping watch, pressed against each other for warmth and comfort and something else that Locus doesn’t have words for. Maybe Felix would have the words, but Locus is afraid to ask.

His dreams are full of blood and Dex and Kai. In his dreams, he shoots them to save Felix. Sometimes he shoots Felix to save them. The face of the child he killed stares up at him, blankly, not understanding.

“Locus! _Locus!”_

There’s a sudden spike of pain in his shoulder, and Locus crashes into awareness with his hand around Felix’s throat and a knife in his shoulder.

He stumbles backwards, releasing Felix, who coughs and sputters for air.

“ _Jesus_ , what’s the matter with you? We’re _safe_ , you fuck!”

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Locus says. He feels far away, distant from all of this. His heart is racing in his chest and he feels bile rising in his throat. Felix rolls down the neck of his suit, and Locus can see where the bruises will develop. Locus reaches out unthinkingly, and Felix flinches away.

He thinks about all the times that he’s slept near Kai and Dex. About the night in his apartment, with them on either side of him, as close as Felix had been.

He could have killed them. And neither of them could fight back, not like Felix. Neither of them would have been able to pull him out of it, would have had a knife on hand to stab him and wake him up.

Cora Grif had been right not to want him near her children. He is a monster and a danger to them.

Promises of coming back seem to wither in front of him as he watches Felix continue to gasp for breath, massaging his throat.

“I can’t go back,” Locus says distantly.

Felix looks up at him. “I mean, go for it if you want,” Felix says, shrugging. “It’s not like anyone would miss them if you… slipped.”

Locus recoils and Felix laughs. The sound is wheezing, but Felix crawls towards him anyways. There’s a hiss of compressed air as he takes off Locus’ helmet.

“They don’t know anything, do they?” Felix asks. There’s a gleam in his eye that Locus distantly knows should make him wary. “They have _no fucking clue_ what you are.”

Locus shakes his head heavily. They don’t. They don’t know the things he’s done. He’d been so focused on making sure they were provided for, that he’s brought this all right to their door. He’s dangerous. He always was. It was a folly to allow himself to grow so attached, to stay in one place so long.

“No one gets it,” Felix is saying. His hands are cold on Locus’ face. “Except us. We get each other. We _need_ each other.”

Felix kisses him, for the first time since their tour ended, and Locus lets him. He’d nearly just killed Felix moments ago, but Felix doesn’t care, giddy and reckless as always as he cups Locus’ head in his hands.

He can’t go home. He can’t risk hurting them. Felix can defend himself, because Felix is like him; just as broken, just as dangerous. But if he goes home, he will ruin them. He will bring this back with him.

He can make sure they’re looked after, even if he’s not there, he thinks distantly, reaching up and tracing Felix’s jaw with his gloved hand. He’ll send them money. It’s not like he needs much, beyond equipment and food. They’ll be fine without him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the flower Kai had put behind his hair, crumpled in a corner of the floor.

Locus closes his eyes and pulls Felix closer.

* * *

 

A week goes by, and they get a message from the bank saying the loan has been paid off.

Kai and Dex run to the airfield, looking for any signs of the plane that Felix and Sam had left in, but there’s nothing there.

Dex stares at the sky.

“Maybe he’s stuck in traffic?” Kai says, but something feels wrong.

“Yeah,” Dex says distantly. “Maybe.”

They go to Sam’s apartment every day, camping out, waiting for his return. A week after he was supposed to come back, the landlord sticks his head in.

“Your big brother just cancelled his lease,” he says. “Rent runs out tomorrow.”

“ _What_?” Kai says.

Dex doesn’t say anything at all.

Sam gave them a number for emergencies, and after Hasegawa says that Sam quit on her yesterday, Kai calls it. Maybe Sam is in the hospital or something. He’ll be back soon. He _has_ to be back soon.

“Hey, this is Felix.”

“Where’s Sam?” Kai demands.

“Oh. It’s _you_.”

“Fuck off! Where’s Sam?”

He laughs, and Kai would be happy if she never heard that sound again, because it’s creepy and gross. “Oh he’s just fine. He just has better things to do than to hang around with two kids.”

“You’re _lying_ ,” she says. “You—”

“He’s not coming back, kid,” Felix says. “He had fun and all. He might even miss you. But he’s done.”

“No.” Kai’s crying now, and Dex’s face is far, far away. Kai hasn’t seen him look like that since the first time Mom left.

“Did you think he’d be happy cleaning up after you two and your mom forever? C’mon. He’s got _real_ things to do.”

Felix hangs up.

The second the line goes dead Kai bursts into tears and hugs Dex tightly with no intention to let go any time soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, there's going to be a happy ending to this fic.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to the pheonemenal a_taller_tale for the beta! And special thanks to every single person who has given feedback bc you guys are the freaking best. 
> 
> Grimmons arrives! Chorus arrives! We're almost at the end!

 

This planet is the fucking worst. Simmons leaves and joins Blue Team _again_ , then Donut tells the rescue ship to _leave_ , Caboose is constantly upset because Church ran off _again_ , and on top of that Wash and Tucker won’t fucking _shut up_. Grif doesn’t know if they’re flirting or just haven’t slept enough lately, but he also doesn’t really care because they’re _getting on his nerves_. Blue Team problems. He knows better than to tamper with them.

So when an asshole in orange armor shows up, Grif is almost ready to write the whole thing off as yet another Blue Team misadventure about to start when the guy opens his mouth and Grif is suddenly a kid again.

“ _Run_!” the man yells, and Grif stares. He’s wearing orange, bright orange, orange and charcoal, the same orange as sunglasses on a smug face—

“Excellent work soldiers.”

Grif’s been punched a lot since joining the army. He’s intimately familiar with the feeling of being punched in the chest, of the way the pain lingers, of struggling to breathe.

This is worse. This is so, so many times worse. Because a figure with cloaking like Tex, like the Meta, comes into sight, in a weird shade of green armor, with a helmet that has a familiar marking across the visor, and it’s unmistakable. No one else has a voice like that.

Grif would recognize his asshole big brother anywhere, even in armor, even more than ten years later.

He can’t speak, can’t breathe. He just stares, and then looks at Felix. There’s blood on his leg, where Sam shot him, and he can’t help but feel kind of… proud, or something… that Sam finally got around to ditching that guy, even if he ditched _them_ first.

There’s some fucking posturing, some weird and ominous statements, but Grif can’t really hear them. His blood is pounding in his ears, and every single thing he’s wanted to say, every name he’s ever wanted to call Sam _or_ Felix are trying to spill out over each other, and the result feels like choking.

And then…

Sam is gone, and they’re left with fucking _Felix_. Felix, who’s injured and just saved Wash… because Sam had just tried to put a bullet through Wash’s head?

His stomach feels gross and wrong, and his head aches just trying to put these pieces together.

He listens to the speech, like the rest of them. Felix calls them the “galaxy’s greatest soldiers”, and Grif has to bite his tongue to stop himself from calling bullshit.

He remembers Felix. He remembers a guy who was willing to feud with a twelve year old girl, who scared his sister so badly that when Grif came home from work, she’d been sitting on the couch holding a knife. Felix is trouble, and Grif doesn’t believe one inch of his story.

“Yeah,” he finally says, after the pitch. “I don’t buy it.”

Felix flinches suddenly, turning to stare at him. Grif doesn’t say anything else, just lets the others reject his offer. And when he tries to slip off to make a call or something, Grif follows him.

“What the fuck are you pulling?” Grif demands.

Felix turns. “So… it is you,” he says, but he’s tense. Ha, guess he hadn’t expected to find Grif here. Good. The guy deserves to be off balance.

“Man, you _really_ pissed Sam off. He wouldn’t let us even kick you out of the house, and now he wants to kill you?”

Felix lets out a nervous laugh. “Uh, Grif, right? Locus he’s—he’s not the guy you knew, okay? He’s gone totally off the deep end.”

“Like I’d believe anything _you_ say about him, you slimy fucker,” Grif says. “What. _Happened_?”

Suddenly, Felix’s body language shifts. “I’m not telling you shit,” Felix says, and there’s the familiar cocky asshole. The one who not only has all the cards, he’s stacked the deck, so he knows what cards _you_ have. “You’re just some brat he got a soft spot for years ago. You’re not _important._ ” They’re wearing helmets, so Grif can’t see his smile, but he can remember it. “He ran away from you and all of your fucking problems with his tail between his legs, remember? Couldn’t be fucked to stick around.”

So what if Felix is right? That doesn’t mean that he gets to win the conversation. He’s practically _bragging_. Sam chose him instead of them. But…

“At least he didn’t try to put a bullet in my head when he ran,” Grif says.

Felix laughs. “Yeah, well. Give him time. He doesn’t like reminders that he’s _human_.”

He leaves, and Grif lets him for now.

“Grif!” Simmons yells, back from the campsite. “Stop napping and come help us!”

Grif takes his eyes off Felix, and heads back towards Simmons, unable to shake the feeling that he’s being watched.

The others are preparing for battle, and Grif’s in the corner screwing with his future cubes when he hears the heavy footsteps behind him. He grabs his gun and swings around, even though a part of him knows exactly what he’s going to see.

“Dexter Grif,” the voice, that old, familiar voice, is almost too quiet to hear.

“The fuck are you doing, Sam?” Grif’s mouth is totally dry, and he grips his gun tightly, even if he’s not pointing it at Sam.

He’s… he’s never seen Sam in armor before. Somehow, in his head, wherever Sam had ended up, he’d be wearing the same goofy print tourist shirts and denim shorts that Kai always bought him and he’d worn without comment or complaint. Or maybe in the cargo pants and white tank top he’d worn the first time they’d met, which he’d put on again whenever he’d leave with Felix.

But in armor, it’s almost like he’s an entirely different person. Grif can’t see his face, can’t see where he’s looking, can’t see the twitches of his mouth and eyebrows that were always so expressive, that Grif had learned to read like a book. In armor, he’s even taller, even wider. For the first time, Grif thinks he can see why Mom had been scared of this guy. Sam looks… _dangerous._ Dangerous and alien.

Felix’s words echo in his head about Sam not liking reminders that he’s human, and he wonders if this is what he’d meant.

“Locus,” Sam corrects, and his voice was somehow even _deeper_ than normal.

“No,” Grif says. “Fuck. You.” He takes a deep breath. But he’s had a bit more time now, a bit of time to rehearse this, to figure out the exact order of his questions. He’d never thought he’d get this chance, never thought he’d actually be able to _say_ any of these things, but here he is. He’s got a chance to get _answers_. “What the fuck are you doing here, and why are you trying to kill Felix? And _us_?”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Sam says, and there’s that weirdly earnest undertone that Grif remembers. He’s gone for fucking _years_ without hearing that voice, without seeing him, but for a second, it’s like no time has passed at all. Sam looks away, and slings the fucking sniper rifle he’s been carrying back over his shoulder, his head tilting downwards. “My orders are to escort your friends to safety.”

“And Felix?” Grif demands. “Dude, I thought he was your _friend_.”  

Sam isn’t looking at him. “I—he—we had a—disagreement.”

“You said he should be glad you missed his _head_. Like holy shit Sam. You really took that friends-turned-mortal-enemies thing all the way.” But then Grif remembers that Sam abandoned them, and gets mad again. “Great. So you’re on the planet for a job. Let me guess, it’s _super important_ , and so that’s why you never came home?”

Sam isn’t looking at him, Grif can _tell_. All that does is make him even more angry. There’s still a box of Sam’s things in the bottom of his closet back home, a box with a razor and those fucking books. The picture of the three of them is back in Blood Gulch. He’d left it with Kai for safe keepings, because he’d still have Simmons at least, unlike her.

“It was for the best.” Sam sounds like he really believes it too, and that just makes Grif even angrier.  

“The _best_?” Grif can’t fucking believe him. “Oh, fuck you. Kai fucking cried for—”

“Why are you here?” Sam interrupts him. Shame radiates from him and his shoulders are hunched. Good to know Kai crying is still an effective weapon, even now. “I know the deposits have been going through.”

Grif wants to laugh. Of _course_ that’s what he’s focusing on. The money had just kept coming in. Sometimes small amounts, sometimes large. Never any notes or messages attached, just dollar signs. The only clue they’d had that Sam was even _alive_ , out there wherever he was. But it hadn’t mattered. It just meant they didn’t starve, that there was more new clothes, that the house stopped looking like it was going to fall apart around them. “Didn’t go back to school. Got drafted.” Which he hadn’t even realized that Sam had been trying to prevent until he’d gotten the letter. And suddenly everything had fallen into place; his weird focus on school, his few vague mentions of college.

And after… everything, when Grif had started to get nightmares, he thought he might actually understand Sam for the first time in years.

“I… see.”

No, he didn’t. He didn’t get that Grif had kept skipping school even though he didn’t _need_ to out of spite, hoping that Sam would come home just to make him go back. He didn’t see that Kai had followed him into the army, that Kai had fucking _volunteered_ , even though she didn’t have to, because she was all alone and she _missed him_ , and if that wasn’t a statement about how apparently no one in their family had any brains, that was.

“Dex,” Sam says, and there’s something twisted with the way that he says it, as if he can’t quite believe it. He straightens his shoulders suddenly, his posture changing completely and his voice becoming stronger. “You need to convince your friends to come with me. Felix is dangerous. The New Republic—”

“Spare me the fucking speech,” Grif says. “Don’t you guys fucking get it? _We don’t care_. Call off your guys in the fight, and then Felix will go away too. Just help us get a ship and I’ll be out of your hair and you can do your badass loner thing again.”

Sam seems to be about to respond when suddenly, loud, armored footsteps start to move towards them. “Oh _Griiiiiiif_ ,” Felix sings. “Got a present for you! One I’ve been saving for your kid sister, but I bet you’ll do just _fine_.”

Sam grabs him and starts pushing him back. For a second, Grif thinks he hears fear in his voice. “Run!”

“What, and leave Simmons with him?” Grif tries to twist out of Sam’s grip, but if he’d been strong before, he’s even stronger in armor. “I’m not going _anywhere_ , dumbass, let me _go_ —”

“Then I’m sorry,” Sam says. “This is for your own safety.” He lets Grif go, and for a second Grif thinks that’s the end of it, but then Sam moves. He draws his sniper rifle off his back, and before Grif can move away, the butt of it comes crashing down on his helmet, knocking him out cold.

Grif wakes up, lying on a medical cot. He knows it’s medical because of the smell; it’s like shit straight out of his nightmares. He only ever wakes up in med bays after… after shit goes really far up the creek.

It all comes back at once, and his eyes fly open.

 _Sam_.

_Felix._

_Simmons_.

He sits upright. Just like he thought, he’s in a medical bay, with nobody in sight except Sam, who’s sitting nearby, awkward in his full armor, perched in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs that all hospitals seem to have.

“You’re awake.”

“What the _fuck_ , asshole?” Suddenly, he realizes they’re far away from their crash site. “Where are my friends?”

“I… I managed to recover some of them.” Sam looks at his hands instead of Grif, and that’s… that’s not good.

“ _Some_?” He has to bite down on the steady stream of “where’sSimmonswhere’sSimmons” that threatens to burst out. “ _Who?_ ”

“Your Sergeant,” Sam says. “And Agent Washington.”

“Who _else_?” Grif says, feeling panic bubbling in his chest.  

“I… we also recovered the robot. He was badly damaged, but it would be possible to repair—”

“Simmons. Did you rescue _Simmons_?”

“… no.”

Grif swears, clambering to his feet. He’s in full armor, not even tucked it. Sam must have just dumped him on top of it like a dumbass jerk.

“Dex—” Sam gets to his feet, as if planning on making him sit back down.

“I’m _not_ leaving Simmons out there with him. Or Caboose. Or Tucker. Or Donut. Or even Doc!”

“The Federal Army is currently unaware of the location of the Rebel Base,” Sam says, his hands on Grif’s shoulders.

Grif stares at him, the smooth visor with the familiar X, but larger and green than the scar on his face. “Bullshit.”

“It is unlikely we would have allowed them to remain if we did,” Sam sounds testy, almost like Grif is insulting him. “The location of their base is secret.”

“Bull _shit_! Take off that fucking helmet and look me in the eye and _say it to my face_.”

Sam hesitates for a moment. But then he takes a step closer, and draws the privacy curtain that surrounds the hospital bed.

He reaches up and removes the helmet slowly, as if scared at what’s going to happen next.

Sam looks _old_. That’s the first thing that Grif notices. There’s silver in his hair, which is held back in that familiar ponytail style. Instinctively, Grif looks for signs of Kai’s handiwork; braids or twists or flowers, but of course, there’s nothing there. It looks longer than it had been, and there’s traces of a beard on his face.

He looks tired too; there are wrinkles on his forehead and dark circles around hisi eyes. He doesn’t remove the rest of the armor, standing stiffly, almost alien in the bulk of it. His helmet stays in his hands, and he looks ready to put it back on, should someone approach or a loud noise occur.

Grif takes off his own helmet. Sam’s eyes go wide for a moment, surprised, probably, by the patches of Simmons on his face.

Simmons.

Who’s alone with Felix. Okay, maybe not alone, but there without _Grif_. Anxiety and fear churn his stomach.

“What happened?” Grif demands.

Sam looks away. “I needed to get you out. You were my priority. Felix…” he trails off, and Grif stops himself from shivering at the memory of Felix’s voice in the jungle. “He would have hurt you.”

Grif thinks of Felix and he knows the parts of him that are Simmons’ pale have gone green. “What about my friends?”

Sam can’t meet his eyes. “He has no reason to hurt them. He needs them. But you—”

“What?” Grif feels something bitter building in his chest. He’s relieved, sure, relieved because Sam is probably right, Felix needs the others, because the New Republic needs them. But Grif is exempt from that for some reason? The bitter feeling keeps rising, building. It’s not quite a laugh, not quite a sob, but almost both at the same time. He wants to puke. He wants to hug his brother. “He thinks he can, what? Hurt you with me? C’mon.”

Sam frowns, and Grif gives himself a moment to enjoy how it’s the exact same frown that he used to have whenever he’d find Kai doing some stupid shit. “Yes.”

Grif snorts. “Well. Guess we both know he’s wrong there.”

There’s a twitch, as if Sam wants to reach out, but if it happens, it’s aborted so quickly that Grif thinks he might have imagined it. But he looks like Grif slapped him.

“No,” Sam finally says. “He’s not.”

Grif feels the world grind to a halt.

Sam had left. This has been a fact of his life for years. He’d left, just like everyone else, because he hadn’t cared. Grif hasn’t ever doubted this; it’s a fact of his existence, like that Kai will do dumb shit the second his back is turned, or that Simmons is a fucking nerd, or that the sky is blue. Sure, Sam had sent money, but that was... guilt or something else. Maybe he had cared, but not enough to stay, and what else mattered? Kai had _cried_ when he left. Left, and hadn’t even had the decency to tell them. He’d just… not come home.

But if Felix could... if Sam cares enough to…

When the world starts to move again, Sam is gone. There isn’t even a shimmer in the air.

The curtain parts suddenly, and a woman in white and purple armor bounces in. “Why _hello_ Private Grif! Agent Washington just got out of surgery; I think Locus had to throw your Sergeant in the brig because he kept trying to stab me, but really I think he was just being silly!”

“What?” Grif says, staring at her blankly. “Who are you even? Where’s—” He stops himself from saying Sam’s name. She probably wouldn’t even know who he was talking about.

“I’m Doctor Grey, silly!” She spreads her hands out widely. “Welcome to the Federal Army of Chorus!”

Life with the Feds is fucking awful.

They’re at this weird, snow-covered base in the mountains, and the food is fucking _shitty_.

Grif is going out of his fucking mind with worry. The Feds have so many fucking rumors about Felix, and Grif can’t help but believe most of them are true. Things are fucking terrible; it’s all a mess, and even if the guys are on Felix’s side…

It’s hard not to imagine.

The Feds also have rumors about Sam though, and it’s just as weird.

Because this is _Sam_. The guy worked for a greengrocer and let Kai put flowers in his hair. He thought the beach was stupid and refused to sleep in Mom’s room and liked his curry so hot it made his eyes water. Sam, who walked Kai home from school every day, even after Mom kicked him out and who stayed up late with Grif looking through bills. The giant nerd who watched bad movies with him and had nightmares.

But the Feds have rumors, and so that’s how Grif knows there’s also _Locus_ , who’s more machine than man, who breathes like Darth Vader, who’s scarred a thousand times over by the war until his face is ugly beyond human belief. He can teleport and fly and turn invisible. He’s unstable and dangerous, and his paycheck is the only reason he hasn’t murdered the entire Federal Army in their sleep, and his presence is the only thing that stops the Rebels from slaughtering them all.

By unspoken agreement, they don’t talk in front of the others. But calling Sam “Locus” feels wrong. It reminds him of that day, in the kitchen, listening to the way Sam seemed smaller, after Felix left. He’d bounced back, but… just for a little while, he’d seemed more worn down, more fragile, more… broken. Grif doesn’t like that name. It doesn’t feel like it belongs to his brother.

He writes to Kai every day, even though they can’t go through. Tells her all the stupid shit that Sam has done, as well as the other stuff that’s been happening all over the base. Like Sarge blowing up Warthogs or Wash getting Doyle to faint three times in a row.

Grif has his own quarters, for whatever reason, so sometimes Sam stops by, when he’s not on missions. He brings food, whatever he can scrape up. It’s usually better than whatever Grif’s eaten that day, so he never complains.

Sam never stays long, always hovering at the edge of Grif’s room, as if thinking that Grif is about to throw him out. And sometimes, Grif is. The guy _left them_. He left them alone with _Mom_ , for the whole extra three weeks she’d stayed after Sam had left, and when she’d left, Kai had cried again, but Grif still isn’t sure if she’d been happy or sad to see Mom go.

They’d gone out to the airfield to watch for Sam every day for a week after Mom had left, hoping beyond hopes that maybe _now_ he’d come back. But he never had.

One day, as Sam is preparing to leave after dropping off what appears to be a still-warm container of curry, Grif stops him.

“Take off your helmet and join me, asshole. You brought enough for two.”

Sam hesitates, but he does. Maybe it’s a sign that he missed Grif almost as much as Grif missed him, because apparently Sam _never_ takes his helmet off elsewhere.

Maybe it’s because seeing the faces he makes would totally ruin his air of mystery though, because Sam still has the worst fucking poker face that Grif has ever _seen_. And just to prove it, Grif trounces him in Poker, Chorus Poker, Blood Gulch Poker, _and_ Go-Fish.

Sam takes his defeats without complaining, but he always looks thoughtful.

It starts to become routine, eating food and playing games, sitting there in silence. Kai was always the talker of the three of them. There had never been a need for them to speak that much, not with her to fill the silence.

It’s not that Grif doesn’t miss her constantly, but right now, with Sam here, it feels even more obvious. Like he’s missing a limb, as well as Simmons and his other friends.

Sam, surprisingly, is the one who starts talking.

“How did you meet Agent Washington?” He asks one day, staring down at the full house that Grif had just smugly revealed. They’re playing for shiny rocks that Grif has been collecting, because he’s eaten all the candy Sam had discovered for them to play for.

“We ruined his plan to kill the Meta,” Grif says automatically, before stopping to stare. “Wait… why do you care?”

“Agent Washington is… peculiar. I do not understand him. I wish to correct this.”

Grif falls over onto his side, laughing.

Well, at least Sam’s taste in men isn’t always as awful as Felix.

In public, they don’t interact much. There’s no reason to; Grif mostly just dicks around, helping Grey in medical or Sarge in the armory or Wash with training. Locus is always off doing his weird dramatic missions or occasionally trying to have conversations with Wash that only ever seem to result in Wash wanting to punch someone.

But apparently people have managed to notice that Locus spends time near Grif’s room, even if they don’t knon the full story.

Ah, the power of military gossip.

“Be careful around him, Grif,” Wash says one day over lunch. “I don’t like how interested he is in you.”

“Dude, you’re the one he follows around,” Grif shoots back. “Think he’s got a boner for the Freelancer.”

Wash glares at him. “Take this seriously Grif, this guy is _dangerous_.”

“I think his crush on you is absolutely serious.”

The look Wash gives him is completely and utterly offended, which just makes it all the better. If Grif was a nicer brother, he’d probably either try to convince Wash that Sam wasn’t all that bad, or tell Sam that Wash getting flustered is just his normal state of mind, not necessarily a sign of interest.

But Grif isn’t a nice brother, and besides, Sam fucked off to go have a life of mercenary adventure with Felix. Grif is not about to throw Sam as much as a string, let alone a lifeline here.

Occasionally, Sam brings back snippets of information. Rumors of rebel activity, a few sightings of General Kimball or Felix. He sees Tucker, right before Tucker fucking _blows up an entire building with people inside_.

Jeez, those terrorists work fast on the brainwashing.

But Sam hasn’t seen Simmons.

“I’m certain he’s fine,” Sam says.

“You don’t _know_ ,” Grif points out. “You don’t know Simmons, okay? He’s going to be fucking falling apart without Sarge there. And Wash is like, his backup Sarge! He’s not going to have _any_ leader to listen to, and that means _he’ll_ try to be a leader, and the last time he got promoted, he _buried Sarge alive_!”

Sam tilts his head to one side. “Will… will your absence not cause any difference?”

“Oh, he’s probably fine with that,” Grif says dismissively, pretending he doesn’t care.  “He’s probably just glad I’m not there to steal his socks.”

“I… see.”

Grif doesn’t want to explain to Sam that Simmons leaves too. Joining Blue Team (twice), and always wanting to be as far away from Grif as possible. He doesn’t want to explain that if Simmons had been here instead of him, Sarge and Simmons probably would have been perfectly happy.

Sam doesn’t say anything else, just looks at him for a long, long time.

“Do you want me to braid your hair?” Grif says suddenly, because it’s falling into his face again, the way it always does when he needs it trimmed, and the only way to handle that is to braid it or get the scissors.

Sam startles, staring at him like he’s grown a second head or something. Which is dumb, because Sam watched Grif braid Kai’s hair for over a year. Sure, he’s never done it for Sam, but that’s because Kai liked to do it.

“… that would be… nice,” Sam finally says.

Grif isn’t as good at the fancy braids as Kai is, but he gets Sam’s hair into a respectable single braid pretty easily. It’s… nice. Sam seems to relax for the first time since they’ve found each other again, letting Grif slowly work on his hair. And Grif can pretend, just for a little while, that Sam never left. That Kai was just a few rooms away, napping or studying or texting her friends. That they were still home, and things were fine.

When he’s done, Sam gives him one of those rare, real smiles. Grif rolls his eyes. “You’re such a sap,” he says, even though Sam hasn’t said anything.

“You are the only one who would say so,” Sam says. Then he puts his helmet on, and leaves.

A few days pass. Sarge hooks up with Doctor Grey, and the entire base is put off their food when they’re caught making out in the hallway. Wash manages to get into an argument with Lopez, even though he doesn’t speaks Spanish. Sam is gone for those days, off on one of his longer missions, the ones where he always comes back from stressed but with better food.

When he sees Sam again, it’s early in the morning. He’s just back, and Grif is just awake.

“What is it?” Grif says. There’s something wrong with the way Sam is standing just outside of his room. His shoulders are hunched forwards, trying to curl in on themselves, like they always get after a nightmare. He looks… scared. He looks around, but they’re alone. “Sam?”

“Your friends are on their way,” Sam says, but there’s something distant in his voice.

“What?” Grif says. “That’s—holy shit you found them? Are they okay?”

“They’re fine.” He sounds almost automatic, like he’s rehearsed this. “For now.”

Grif stops. “What do you mean?”

Sam bows his head. He’s wearing his helmet, and it’s a weird sight. Locus, the terror of both armies, looking small and scared and reluctant.

He slowly straightens up, inch by inch, until he’s standing at his full height. Somewhere in the back of Grif’s mind, he thinks he should be scared, but he’s not sure he is. When Sam speaks again, his voice is perfectly steady.

“My orders are to kill the Reds and Blues, should they reunite.”

And that’s the last thing Grif hears before the world goes black.

He wakes up on the comfiest fucking bed he’s been on in _years_. It’s all super soft and downy. He can’t remember the last time he was on a bed like this. It’s the kind of bed that makes him want to sleep forever and ever, and never get up again.

It’s great, until he realizes he has no idea where he is.

The room is small, but there’s a fridge full of food, a comfy chair, and a note taped to the locked door.

_This is for your own safety._

_I’m sorry._

_-S_

* * *

The line with Control goes dead, and the room fills with a dangerous silence.

“So where is he?” Felix asks. There’s danger, boiling under the surface. Locus understands that now, perhaps better than ever. There had been a quiet glee to Felix when they’d received the orders to dispose of the Reds and Blues.

Locus had protected Dex by taking him to the Federal Army. Felix wants him dead. He knows too much, Felix insisted. He knows their faces, he knows Sam’s _name_ , he might even know more than that. It’s impossible to tell what Dex has pulled together

Once, he had brought Felix into the Grif household. Now, Locus knows the depths of what he and Felix are capable of. He knows better than to allow Felix near anything good, anything kind, and especially anything that Locus cares for that Felix does not. Felix will either want it or want to destroy it, and he’s long since discarded any notion of possessing the Grifs. Dex knows too much. For that alone, Felix would want to kill him. But Locus has been protecting Dex from him, and Felix can’t forgive that.

“Where _is he_?” Felix says, louder this time. “C’mon, don’t think I didn’t notice he wasn’t there!”

Because Locus had moved him the moment the order had come to kill them.

“He has been taken care of.” Safe, and out of Felix’s reach. Dex may never forgive him for this, but he’s safe, and that’s what matters.

Felix looks at him. He knows, or at least suspects. Locus had hoped the evasion would have worked, but Felix knows him better than anyone.

“We’ve got _orders_ , Locus.”

“I am aware.” Dex will never forgive him. “ _Simmons, is Simmons okay_?”

Locus didn’t hold a gun on Richard Simmons when they’d been standing below him and his men, preparing to execute them. His gun had been on Agent Washington, the greatest threat.

But one of his men had been. And it wasn’t like Dex will care if it’s Locus or his men who kill Simmons. Who Simmons is to Dex, Locus isn’t sure. He can’t get a straight answer out of Dex, and his observations of Simmons have revealed no further answers. He doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t know how to _handle_ it.

Locus can keep Dex safe. He can manage this much. He can protect him from this, from himself and from Felix.

Afterwards…

Locus doesn’t know what will happen next. Chorus will be dead, and with it, Dex’s friends. He will never forgive Locus for this.

And perhaps he’ll be right in that.

Locus has known for a long time now that he does not deserve Dex or Kai’s affection. He’s not meant for that. He is a soldier. His purpose is to follow orders. Nothing more, nothing less. He left them, telling himself it was for the best, and they both fell into the army anyway. Grif has scars he won’t explain; entire skin grafts that don’t even match. His files don’t have the answers, but they do tell Locus about a massacre, on a colony. A massacre of which Grif was the sole survivor.

At least Kai is safe, tucked away in Blood Gulch, a soldier, but one still untried by battle, unscarred by the horrors of war. After this, perhaps Locus can take Dex there. So at least they can be together, even if he’s not welcome.

Perhaps it would have been for the best had he never entered their lives. If not for him, maybe things would have been better.

“You’re hiding him,” Felix says. “You’re fucking _hiding him._ ”

Locus says nothing. Let Felix think what he will.

“You’ve gone soft,” Felix marvels. “Holy shit, you’re…”

“Is there a point to this?”

“What happened to the perfect soldier?” Felix demands. “We’ve got orders, are you seriously going to throw it all away for one snot-nosed brat all grown up?”

Locus turns his back on Felix and goes to fetch his weapons. “We need to get going.”

“I’m going to find him,” Felix says, and there’s something almost unsteady to the way he’s speaking. “Our orders are to kill _all_ of them, remember? I’m going to find him and then I’m going to do what you’re too _weak_ to do—”

Locus moves without thinking, without blinking, without hesitating. He slams Felix up against the wall, hand wrapped around his throat, squeezing tightly.

“I said,” Locus growls, “the situation is _handled_.” Felix scrabbles at his hand, trying to break his grip. With his other hand, Locus grabs one of his wrists and pins it to the wall, out of reach of his knives. The other hand might be able to do something, but Locus’ reach is long, so he doubts Felix can reach anything fatal. Just in case, he drags Felix off the ground, and he kicks and struggles harder, breathing raggedly.

“What are you _doing_?” Felix gasps out, thrashing in his grip. “Let go of me, you—”

Locus lets go, and Felix drops to the ground, gasping. “So that’s how it is? _Partner_?” Felix spits.

“We have other targets to deal with,” Locus says. He feels cold and impassive, staring at Felix on the ground. The last time… it had been that night. The night he’d decided to not come back. Something about this is different. He can’t figure out what, exactly, it is, but things are different.

Felix is glaring at him through the helmet.

For a moment, Locus wonders if Felix is about to attack. But instead he laughs, getting to his feet. “Just remember, I’ve got dibs on Lavernius Tucker.”

“Very well. Get ready to leave.”

Dex will hate him for this, Locus thinks, picking up his sniper rifle as they prepare to move out. But he will be alive, and that is what matters. Locus will protect him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is now 6 chapters because this chapter got REALLY LONG and then my darling beta a_taller_tale pointed out there was potential here for a split. So I listened to her. Because she's the best.

Grif doesn’t know how long he’s been here, but he does know he’s going fucking _crazy_.

What did Sam mean that he’s supposed to kill them if they reunite? There was no way Doyle had given an order like that… right?

He eats most of the food in the fridge, and tries not to have a goddamn panic attack. There aren’t any windows and the door is locked. He finds a deck of cards on the chair, but Grif is so far from in the mood it isn’t even funny.

Because Sam had saved _him_ , fine, whatever. But what about the others? Simmons and the others had been on there way to find them, and then Sam had taken him and put him in _here_ , and Sam had said he was supposed to kill them, all of them, but he’d saved Grif, but what about Simmons? His friends, are they okay? Sam wouldn’t… he wouldn’t…

So much for not having a panic attack.

When the world comes back into focus, when his breath slows down, when he’s finished throwing up every single thing he’d just eaten out of the fridge, Sam is there. He’s in the corner of the room, with that stupid helmet on as well as the rest of his armor, hovering but not saying anything, just looking at Grif. He probably thinks that he’s the last person Grif wants comfort from right now, and he… he might not be wrong.

Especially if he’s just killed Simmons.

“Are you alright?” Sam asks. He finally moves to forward, crouching down at Grif’s side but not touching him. He offers a water bottle to him, his movements slow. Which Grif appreciates, since, y’know, Sam had just knocked him out _again_.

Grif takes the water and rinses out his mouth. “What the _fuck_ , Sam?”

Sam stays crouched besides him, his hand slightly outstretched, as if he wants to comfort Grif but is stopping himself. “This was the only way to keep you safe.”

“My friends?” Grif demands.

“Alive,” Sam says quietly. “Agent Carolina infiltrated my people and rescued them.”

Grif has never been more grateful for a goddamn Freelancer than he has been in this moment. “Why?”

“My employer believes that your friends threaten their plans.”

“Doyle?”

“No,” Sam says. “My real employer.”

Grif pulls himself up slightly, staring at his brother with dead eyes. “What the _fuck_ , Sam,” he complains with feeling.

Sam, having apparently found his spine, grabs Grif up by the shoulder and strongarms him into the bed. It’s kind of reminiscent of when they were kids, but Sam is in _armor_ , and is generally terrifying and possibly just tried to kill Grif’s friends, so the memory is kind of sour.

“My true employer has a vested interest in continuing this war,” Sam says. “And they believe that, should the Reds and Blues reunite, they’ll—”

“We’ll,” Grif breaks in, glaring hard at him.

“…be able to bring about the end of the fighting,” Sam finishes. Grif blinks; was that what all of this was about? Dragging out the fighting? Why the hell would anyone want to do that? “So, after Lavernius Tucker was able to obtain data containing your location, despite Felix’s best efforts—”

“Wait. _Felix_?” Grif sits upright again, pushing away Sam’s hand. “You’re still _working with him_?”

“Yes,” Sam says shortly.

“You said he betrayed you!”

“It was a necessary deception,” Sam says. “We had not expected you to be here. Things… got out of control. You were originally supposed to go with Felix, but he…” Sam trails off.

“Wanted to fucking _kill me_?” Grif decides to be helpful.

“You know too much,” Sam sounds miserable, but Grif really doesn’t have time for this, not about Felix trying to _murder him_. “My name, his face—he argued that we could not afford to leave you alive.”

Grif squints. “So instead you grabbed me for the Feds.”

“Yes.” Sam sits down next to him, the mattress sinking under his weight. “I told him you wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Shows what you know,” Grif says, crossing his arms. Then he sits up, scowling. “So wait, when I was being all worried about Simmons—you fucking _knew_!”

“The location of their base is not known to the Federal Army,” Sam says. It’s stiff and formal and— _shit_.

“Did you fucking _Obi-Wan_ me, you asshole?” Grif says.

“For a certain point of view.” He gets to his feet, his shoulders tense, as if expecting Grif to hit him.

“Don’t you fucking quote Star Wars at me! You fucking _lied_! All this time, I was—you were—what the _fuck_?”

“If you were to reunite with your friends, I was supposed to kill you,” Sam says. “It was for the best.”

“The _best_?” Grif screams. He feels like he can’t breathe. Months of worry, all for _nothing_ , all because Sam fucking lied, and didn’t just not tell him, but pretended not to know at all, and Grif can’t fucking believe this, any of this. “Did you ever consider that you could have just said _no_?”

“I am a _soldier_ ,” Sam say, turning his back on Grif and moving towards the door. “I follow orders.”

Grif starts to laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

It’s not a good laugh; it’s bitter and angry. He laughs until his sides ache, and when he has to stop to catch his breath, only then does he manage to say the words.

“Bullshit! You haven’t been a soldier since we met you!”

Sam freezes up.

“You were _discharged_ , remember asshole? You’re a _mercenary_.”

Sam slowly turns to face him, radiating discomfort. “I…”

“You take these jobs for _money_ ,” Grif says, not wanting to let him speak. “That means you can say _no_.” He points right at Sam. “When you left, you said those jobs were to help us, right? All of these jobs—you’ve been sending us money for _years_ now, and you keep telling yourself it’s helping us.”

“Dex,” Sam says, and his voice is ragged and quiet. But Grif doesn’t _care_.

“We don’t _want_ this!” Grif yells. “Why the fuck _would we_? We never even wanted you to _leave_ , why would we want you to go evil and kill our friends!” Grif takes a deep, shuddering breath. “We just wanted you to come _home_ , asshole!” The admission pains him, leaving him feeling wretched and hollow.

Sam looks away. “It wasn’t safe for you.” His voice trembles for a moment. “I’m… dangerous. I nearly killed Felix.”

“Too bad you failed!” Grif snaps. “He’s fucking terrible!”

“I could have hurt _you_ or Kai!” Sam snaps. “You do not understand. Felix could stop me. You—”

“If Tucker can survive Wash nearly shooting him once a week, we could have managed!” Grif clenches his fists. “You never hurt us, not _once_! Anything would have been better than you just fucking leaving without even saying goodbye!”

“It was the only way,” Sam insists.

“You’re _wrong_!” Grif’s voice echoes in the cell. “We could have _made it work_ , if you had _told us_!” Something clicks into place. “But you couldn’t do that, could you? You were _scared_. You left because you were _scared_.” Maybe it’s cruel, but Grif _doesn’t care_.

Sam recoils.

“We would have helped you,” Grif says. “You were _family_. But you left. Just like Mom did. You promised you were going to come home, and you _left_.”

For a moment, Sam is silent and still.

Then he turns on his heel and stalks out, leaving Grif alone in the room.

Grif tries the door after he leaves, and, finding it locked again, takes a goddamn nap.

He wakes up to find that Sam has restocked the fridge, and eats just about everything to prove a fucking point. Then he sits on the chair and stares at the camera, and just keeps fucking staring because he _knows_ Sam is watching. Unless he’s busy murdering his friends. Which is _a literal thing Grif has to worry about_.

Sam comes back eventually. He’s got more food. “Your friends are fine,” he says by way of greeting, which is probably smart, because Grif had been planning on ignoring him.

“What?” He says instead.

“They disabled the tracker planted on them.”

Grif tilts his head. “Freckles, right? The tracker _you_ planted on them?” It’s all falling into place now; he couldn’t figure out why Sam would have saved Freckles, let alone given him back to Wash. But if he needed a tracker... that makes so much more sense.

Sam says nothing, just starts to unpack the food. How the hell had he gotten Thai Food in the middle of a warzone? Grif has questions. But he reluctantly sits down next to Sam and starts opening the Tupperware.

“So, you’ve been hunting them?”

Sam takes off his helmet. He looks tired. Grif considers punching him, but Sam also looks thinner, so his cheekbones are more pronounced. He’d probably break his hand.

“Yes. They remain one step ahead of us.”

Relief makes it easier to eat. Grif digs in, while Sam picks at his food.

“They worry for you,” Sam finally says. Grif snorts, disbelieving. “I overheard them.”

Grif looks up, mouth full of chicken. He’s not sure what to make of the words, but the context alone is alarming enough. “You were that close?” His gut twinges again; he knows how good Sam is supposed to be.

“I had other priorities,” Sam says. He stares blankly at his plate. “They had captured one of my men and were interrogating him. It was more important to silence him than anything else. But… your Simmons was worried about you.”

Grif chokes on his food. “He’s not—he’s just _Simmons_ , okay? Not _my_ Simmons. He doesn’t even _like_ me, okay, we’re not—you’re worse than _Tucker_.”

He sees the smile that Sam tries to hide, and scowls.

“… they’re all really okay?”

“Yes,” Sam says.

Grif shifts where he’s sitting. He should ask what comes next, but he’s scared to. There’s something… off about Sam right now. Like he’s thinking.

Maybe, Grif hopes, _maybe_ , what he said has sunk in.

Eventually, Grif finishes eating, and Sam cleans up. “You’ll be back soon, right?” Grif forces himself to say. It’s not that he _wants_ Sam here it’s just—he hates being alone, alright? It reminds him of… things.

And, if Sam is here with him, he’s not trying to put a bullet through Simmons’ brain.

“Yes,” Sam says, and then he leaves.

It’s a fucking lie though, because when Sam comes back, it’s been _ages_ , and Grif’s starving because he’s eaten all the food, and Sam staggers in through the door. He’s hurt; he’s hurt _badly_ , cradling one of his arms against his chest and blood coming out of his leg, and Grif reacts without thinking, rushing forward.

“What the hell happened to you?” Grif doesn’t even know where to begin looking.

“Felix knows where you are,” Sam’s voice sounds weird and twisted. “Your friends are—they won. They warned the armies. We’re falling back, but you need to _run_.”

Grif feels paralyzed. “I can’t leave you here, he’ll kill you!” If Sam was expecting him to believe that Felix wasn’t responsible for some of those injuries, he probably also had a bridge to sell him on a goddamn moon.

Sam shakes his head. “He won’t—”

“Fucking _bullshit_ ,” Grif grabs one of Sam’s arms and starts to try to steer him out the door. Sam digs his heels in.

“I won’t be welcome with the armies,” Sam insists. “I—what I did—” Guilt, Grif’s hearing _guilt_ , and he wants to fucking crow with celebration, but there’s no time for that.

“Well, I don’t know where we’re going, so we’ll argue this when we get there!” Grif snaps.

Apparently he’s in some sort of abandoned military base. Sam verbally guides him through it. He’s exhausted and _really hurt_ , and Grif tries not to worry too much, but he’s _really not doing well_ on that front.

There’s a warthog there, and Grif forces Sam into the passenger seat. The navigation is already programmed, and Grif starts fucking _driving_.

“What the hell happened?” Grif demands.

Sam is slumped against the seat, looking completely beaten. “I—you reminded me. Of why I agreed to go with Felix in the first place. And I was looking—at the old records—of our first job.” His breathing is not sounding great.

“Dude, did you break your ribs?”

“Washington broke them,” Sam corrects. “I found—he lied.”

“What, Wash?” Okay, so maybe Grif isn’t quite done giving Sam shit, even if he’s pretty much a bloody pulp.

“Felix. He said—two jobs. Two job contract.” Sam inhales sharply. “He lied. And the first job should have been enough for everything.”

Grif feels sick. “What?”

“And when I asked questions about it, he said—he said he was doing me a favor. That you and Kai were weaknesses, and he’d saved me from them once, and he was going to do it again. And he showed me your location and then—I attacked him.”

“What?” Grif has known since he was a kid that Felix was important to Sam. It had been obvious, every inch of it. The way that Sam had walked around him, turned to him for answers, even talked about him. “ _You_ attacked _him_?”

Sam turns to face him. He can’t see his expression through his helmet.

“He was going to hurt you,” Sam says, as if that’s all the explanation needed for betraying the only person from his past, from before Grif and Kai, that he’s ever mentioned.

“Oh,” Grif says, having no idea what else to add.

He turns his attention back to the road and keeps driving.

It’s a long drive to Armonia, which is apparently where they’re heading, according to Sam. Sam drifts in and out, waking up every time with a flinch. Grif thinks he’s trying not to fall asleep.

Grif wonders what kind of new nightmares Sam’s picked up.

“You should be getting close enough to radio them,” Sam says, finally.

Grif clutches at the steering wheel. “They’re really okay?”

“Last I knew.”

Well _that_ isn’t exactly reassuring.

“I should—leave,” Sam mutters.

“No,” Grif snaps. “You’re going to sit there, and we’re going to meet my friends, and you’re gonna fucking help us stop Felix.”

“They won’t—”

“I won’t let them hurt you,” Grif snaps. “We’ll—we’ll figure something out.”

He doesn’t get to talk to Simmons or even Sarge or Wash or Doyle—he talks to some kid named Palomo who keeps calling him “Sir”, and tells him to stay in position and help is on its way.

“Bring a medic,” Grif says, eying Sam. Sam makes a soft, protesting noise, but Grif hangs up before he can vocalize a protest.

“I should cloak,” Sam finally says. “They might believe I’ve taken you hostage otherwise.”

“Pff, I’d be a terrible hostage,” Grif says dismissively, but Sam is already invisible. “You better not run away.”

“I won’t,” Sam says. “I swear.”

“You realize that means jack shit after the last time you left, right?”

Sam says nothing.

In the distance, there’s the sound of the familiar music, and a warthog pulls into view. Grif feels himself grinning, and stands up.

Two warthogs, actually; Blue Team is piled into the other one. All of them, piled into two warthogs, full to the brim. Grif gets out of the warthog, keeping an eye on the shimmer that is Sam out of the corner of his eye.

“Grif!” Simmons says, also jumping out of the warthog. For a moment, Grif thinks he’s going to run to him and hug him or something.

He looks okay. It’s hard to tell with the helmet, but he looks… okay. Intact. Grif finds it easier to breathe as he scans all of them. None of them look hurt too badly but—

“Where’s Tucker?” He demands, finally realizing that the person in teal isn’t Tucker, but Carolina.

“Oh, he’s _fine_ ,” Doctor Grey says, and oh boy, they really did bring medical. That’s good, because Grif is pretty sure Sam is secretly dying or some shit like that. “He just took a knife to some semi-vital organs! A few more days in the hospital and he’ll be good as new!”

Grif swallows. He wonders if Felix or Sam was responsible for that. He doesn’t want to ask.

“Where have you been?” Simmons is hovering. “We thought you were dead when we couldn’t find you!”

Sarge sighs loudly. “Damn it, Grif! You can’t do anything right!”

“Sorry to disappoint, sir,” Grif says, leaning against the warthog. He hears a soft, furious noise behind him at Sarge’s comment, and rolls his eyes. “Shut up, Sam.”

“Who the fuck is Sam?” It’s Simmons who says it, but everyone is looking at him, confused.

“That asshole in the corner there,” Grif says, jerking his finger over his shoulder, pointing right at where Sam is. “My asshole older brother who decides that planet killing with his ex-boyfriend is more important than showing up for Thanksgiving.” He pauses. “And he kidnapped me in a panic.”

“I was not _panicking_ ,” Sam says, sounding offended as he shimmers into view.

Someone screams—Grif’s money is on Simmons, and every gun points at Sam in a moment.

“Grif,” Wash growls. “What’s going on?”

“I told you,” Grif says. “That’s Sam. My brother.”

“You don’t have a brother!” Simmons protests.

“We didn’t know about Kai until we met her though,” Donut says thoughtfully, stroking the chin of his helmet.

“He tried to kill Felix, which is great, because Kai and I were trying to get him to do that since we were kids,” Grif says. “And then he realized that killing planets is bad. Right Sam?”

“… correct.”

“This is… absurd,” Carolina says, sounding baffled.

“Honestly? Sounds about right,” Church says.

“You didn’t mention knowing Felix before because—?” Wash asks, still sounding suspicious. His gun hasn’t moved from Sam one inch.

“I’m sorry, when did my life become your business?” Grif snaps.

“ _When the people in your life are trying to kill this entire planet_!” Wash’s voice can get _really_ high when he wants to, but at least he’s no longer pointing his gun at Sam. “You didn’t mention this _once_ when we were with the Federal Army!”

“What part of “none of your business”, don’t you understand?”

Wash lets out a strangled noise.

“Hello,” Caboose says, waving at Sam.

Carolina’s gun is still aimed right at Sam’s head. “Why are you really here?” She demands.

There’s a long pause. “Grif wouldn’t leave,” he says, finally. “And I’m supposed to keep him safe.”

Grif is grateful for his armor in that moment, because everyone turns to look at him. There’s an awkward feeling in the air, because no one knows how to handle this. And Grif can’t blame them, because _he_ doesn’t know how to handle this. But finally, the moment breaks, and they start moving.

Carolina cuffs Sam but she does let Grey look after him. He’s got stab wounds and a broken arm and cracked ribs. They put him in a different warthog, because apparently they think it’s a trick and Grif has been brainwashed or has Stockholm Syndrome or something. Grif clenches his hands into fists and doesn’t say anything. But Simmons sits next to him, and well. Grif can live with that.

It’s not a long drive to Armonia.

“He’s older, right?” Simmons finally says.

“Yeah.” Simmons believes him, at least. Either that or he’s pretending to.

“You never mentioned him.”

“He—” Grif crosses his arms. “He left when I was a kid.” It burns to say it, and it feels like his throat is closing up. He’s keenly aware of the others pretending they’re not listening in.

“You don’t look much alike,” Donut comments, tipping his head to one side.

Grif turns to stare at him. “When did you see Sam without his—he’s adopted, okay?” He crosses his arms and leans back into the seat. There’s something sour on his tongue, curdling as more and more pieces of his past comes out. He _hates it_ —he’s never wanted this, their hands all over the details of his past. They’re going to find out about Mom, and not just the random shit that Kai had told them, about the time when Mom had joined the Circus and shit, but also shit like her boyfriends and the debt and her leaving all the time. They’re going to paw over it and every single inch of it is going to be fair game for mockery.

“So what happened with you guys?” Grif says, hoping to distract. “I was locked in a room for like a week.”

Simmons starts talking immediately, talking about the New Republic and Kimball, who apparently is just as scary as the Federal Army had thought, but in a kind of different way, and about Felix, and about how he had a _squad_ , and was a Captain now, and so was Donut— _Donut outranked Grif, what the fuck_ —and how things had been _terrible,_ and how they’d finally found out where they were, and how everything had gone to shit, but they’d found each other.

“But you weren’t there, and Sarge said he thought you were asleep somewhere, but then the pirates killed everyone in the base, so we thought—we thought you were gone, but Locus made some ominous comments, so Wash guessed he had you captured and was going to use you to lure us into a trap!”

Grif swallows and looks away, not sure what to think about that. Simmons has inched towards him slowly as the story has gone on, and Grif wonders if Simmons has even realized he’s doing it. He wants to just put his helmet on Simmons’ shoulder and sleep, but there’s no way Simmons would let him do that; not now, not ever.

They’d done just fine without him, after all. Simmons hadn’t killed anyone trying to be a leader, and they’d even managed to survive Sam and Felix’s attack. He’d been right all along. They didn’t need him. They probably hadn’t even missed him, not like he’d missed them, Simmons had probably been _happy_ he was gone and he didn’t have to deal with him and his messes and his bullshit and—

He nearly jumps out of his skin as something brushes against his ankle, pulling him out of his thoughts. He looks down, and sees Simmons’ foot, awkwardly trying to hook around his.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Simmons says, sounding all rushed and flustered. It’s _cute_ , Grif thinks, before brutally suppressing that thought. “I—yeah.”

Grif stares at him for a moment, not sure what to say or to do. Because this is _Simmons_ , first and foremost, and there’s a strange feeling in his chest that Grif knows better than to examine too closely. “… me too,” Grif says finally, because he doesn’t have anything else _to_ say, at least not anything that he’s willing to say out loud, and moves his foot just enough to hook Simmons’ with his.

They both look away in that moment, but neither of them move their feet. They stay like that all the way to Armonia in silence. Even Donut doesn’t seem to have anything to say, which just makes the moment all the more surreal. Grif just keeps waiting to wake up, but he’s starting to think he couldn’t have possibly made this up.

And Grif couldn’t be happier, at least not until they get there, and there are more guns being pointed at Sam, and Grif wants to fucking scream. Sam is dragged out of the warthog, and Wash is holding a gun on him, and Grif _knows_ Sam just tried to kill all of them, but that doesn’t mean he has to like this, any of this.

Carolina nudges him, finally drawing his attention away from everything that’s happening. “I won’t let them kill him,” she promises. There’s something… strange in her voice. Grif has no idea what it is, or what to think about it, but it’s almost kind, almost pitying, but not quite either of those things.

Grif’s shoulders slump, and he feels so tired he could sleep for a week. Sam isn’t protesting at all, isn’t fighting. Grif wonders if he will when they take his armor, because even he has only seen Sam without his helmet a few times since reuniting. “He’s _family_ ,” he says, too quiet for the others. He doesn’t know if that’s even an explanation, or just a statement, because everything is just too much, and he doesn’t know anymore.

“I understand,” she promises. “Go. Grey wants to look you over. You don’t want to watch this.”

“Watch what?” Grif turns to her, heart racing. A thousand scenarios race through his head—torture for one, because she only promised not to let them kill him, and Grif’s heard _rumors_ about Grey and—

Carolina turns her head, and Grif follows her gaze to where Doyle and a woman in New Republic armor are walking towards them.

“He’s going to be interrogated about the things he’s done on this planet,” she says. “You don’t want to hear the things he’s done.” She’s so sure of herself, and Grif thinks about Sam’s insistence that he’d been doing this for him, for Kai, and feels sick.

“Yeah,” he says hoarsely, choosing not to question why Carolina understands this, why she’s helping him. “You’re right there.”

He walks away, feeling Sam’s gaze on the back of his helmet the whole while.

* * *

 

Kai finishes up another letter to Dex. She can’t send them, duh, but it doesn’t mean she can’t try. She used to do this for Mom when they were kids, and later for Sam. She’s also written a few to the others—Tex, Tucker, Doc, Caboose, Church, Simmons, even the old guy who yelled at her a lot and the guy who spoke Spanish who choked her until she passed out that one time.

The UNSC people told her that Dex and the others are all dead. Kai knows that’s a bunch of bullshit, cuz Dex would never do that to her. Plus the UNSC were being all sketchy and didn’t have bodies, so it’s obviously some sort of high level cover up because they’d figured out something important again.

On her desk, she’s got the picture of the others meeting some important looking bald guy. Tex and Church aren’t there, but there’s some other hot chick and the cop, and it looks all fancy. The article says they stopped bad guys, which sounds about right. She’s got it framed all nice, next to the picture of her and Sam and Dex back home.

She probably should be working—she’s got a _major_ convention to be planning, and one of the panel speakers just cancelled on her so she needs to find a last-minute replacement, plus she needs to order another shitton of glitter and make sure there are metal detectors installed.

But she can use a bit more of a break.

She picks up the photo with Sam in it, and looks at it again.

It’s been a long time since money has gone into the account that Sam has set up. There have been gaps before, but never anything this long. Maybe he’s dead, or maybe he’s finally decided he’s not doing that anymore. Or maybe he went home and couldn’t find them, and thinks _they’re_ gone. She hopes not—it would really suck if he went home and they weren’t there.

The house is sold now; Mom had sold it a year after Kai had been drafted. Which was a pretty major surprise, because Kai hadn’t even realized Mom was _alive_ , because she hadn’t seen her since her sixteenth birthday party.

Kai pushes Mom out of her mind—thinking about Mom just makes her sad, especially when Dex is gone.

She takes the picture out of the frame and puts it in the pocket of her armor. She does that sometimes—it’s like a good luck token. Sam always looks after her. He promised.

Kai hears the sound of one of those bird-planes and goes outside to look. Being the only person in Blue Base means she’s basically got the run of everything. She keeps a spare bedroom ready, in case the others come back, but she’s turned Church’s old room into an office so she doesn’t have to work and sleep in the same place, and has renovated Red Base into a proper club. It took her forever to get those lights set up right, but she likes the end result. The DJ she works with has a _sexy_ laser light show.

She knows something is wrong when she enters the living room and someone’s already there.

He’s in grey armor, and he’s got a knife out, and something about him is terrifying and familiar. Kai takes a step back. “Who the fuck are you?”

“There you are,” and holy shit, Kai knows that voice.

She points at Felix. “ _You_? What the fuck are you doing here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger? Who me?


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at the end!
> 
> Thank you _so much_ to everyone who has supported me since the start of this project; I have been blown away by all of your comments and affection. And particularly special thanks to a_taller_tale, who has been my wonderful beta for the duration of this project and has been super supportive and helpful. 
> 
> I'm thinking about playing a bit more with this universe; the limited POVs I've been using in the main story means that some things get brushed over, and I'd like to explore that. But we'll see where things goes!

“Hey brat,” Felix says, and he’s _fast_ , shit, because Kai’s pinned against the wall with his knife against her throat before she can even go for her gun. She doesn’t carry her rifle around these days, because it scares her business partners, but she’s still got her pistol at her side, but she’s not even sure it would do her any good. “God I’ve wanted to do this for years,” he says, and fuck, he definitely has a knife kink, this is _not good_.

“Get off of me!” Kai tries to shove him off, her heart hammering in her chest. Is Sam here? What the fuck is Felix doing here, what does he _want_? The knife digs against her throat and Kai feels tears welling up in her eyes. She doesn’t want to die, fuck, fuck, fuck, this _sucks_ and not in the fun way.

“Shut up and _listen_ , _fuck_ I forgot how annoying you are.” He’s not paying attention to her, she realizes, and starts slowly reaching for her gun. He likes the sound of his voice, he likes that she’s afraid, so she tries to stay afraid, keeps her breath all short and doesn’t stop her tears. “Your ‘brothers’ are causing me trouble, so if you want to keep breathing, you’ll behave and follow me.”

Kai’s fingers are wrapped around the handle of her gun, and it will take a second to move it into place and shoot him, but—

“Dex and Sam?” She says, and she doesn’t have to fake the tremor in her voice. He knows where they are? It’s been years and years and years and he just walks in here like this, knowing where they are, and—and well, it’s hard to think about other things after that.

“Yeah, we’re going on a _trip_!” He’s mocking her, but she doesn’t even care, numb as she is with the knowledge that her brothers are okay and _together_. She barely even spares a thought that they haven’t come to her, because clearly, they’re in some deep shit, otherwise Felix wouldn’t be in her living room, monologuing like a fucking B-Movie villain. “Sam’s apparently missed your fatass brother so much he was willing to leave me to go hang out with him, so I figure if I have _you_ , he’ll come running right back where he belongs.”

Kai lets go of the gun and moves her hand away from it, so he won’t realize what she had been trying to do.  

He’s going to take her to Dex and Sam. She can handle the rest. He’s still thinking of her as a scared little girl who locked him in the bathroom, who hadn’t even called the police when he tried to break into her house. But Kai’s not a kid anymore; she’s a fucking _badass space marine_ , and she started her own corporation and she’s going to _kick his ass_.

Once he shows her where Sam is, duh. And then she’ll kick Sam’s ass. And maybe Dex’s for good measure.

He drags her to the pelican, which he’s parked in the VIP parking space she’s had set up for the Club, because apparently he’s not just a kidnapper, he’s also a double-parking _dick._ While he’s doing that, he takes her gun from her, laughing as he realizes she was armed. “Who lets _you_ have a weapon? Honestly.”

Kai doesn’t say anything, just makes sure she keeps crying, because he expects that and likes it so much that he doesn’t notice anything else. Because he doesn’t _know her_ , not at all, otherwise he’d never have handcuffed her with the classic military grade cuffs, because _pfff_ , Kai has been able to get out of those since she was seventeen. Even being in armor shouldn’t stop her; she and Tucker had played with them a bit, way back before they’d all left, and she has the record on escaping them. Last time, it had only taken her fifteen-point-three seconds.

Kai wonders if Sam will put a dent in Felix’s smug rat face for kidnapping her. She sure hopes so. Not that she’s not capable of doing it herself, but she thinks there will generally be a sense of satisfaction from seeing Sam do it.

Felix is a talker, and she wonders if that’s why Sam had started fucking him, just to see if he’d shut up. Because he _never stops talking_ , and like, Kai gets talking a lot, she talks a lot, but there’s a difference between chatting and telling fun sex stories and talking just to hear the sound of his own voice, and Felix is so far over the line for the second one that he can’t even see it.

Sometimes, Kai really has to wonder about Sam’s taste in guys.

When he’s in the cockpit instead of bothering her in the back, she escapes the cuffs over and over again, trying to make her time better. She wants to be able to book it the second she can; there’s no need to take risks. Felix is fast too, and he won’t care about hurting her if he catches her trying to run away, so she needs to be sure she can make it when she runs. She should probably wait until she can see someone she knows, who can take her to Sam and Dex, but that seems like a long time to wait, plus Felix will probably have a gun on her.

She still has the codes to the old Blue Team radio channel, so if Dex is near wherever it is that Felix is taking her, that probably means Tucker and the guys (and maybe Tex?) are there too, and she’ll be able to find her brothers that way, right?

Kai puts the cuffs back on with a sigh, tired from trying to work out her escape plans. Handcuffs are so much less fun when there’s no one around to play with, or without being worked up already. And she’s not gonna get _herself_ worked up with her bro’s creepy ex around, because ew, ratface.

She sighs, and resolves to find someone hot the second she gets to wherever they’re going. Maybe Tucker would let her handcuff him and play; he was pretty into that back in Blood Gulch. Or Tex; that could be a lot of fun, unless she and Church are exclusive. Kai had never thought to ask. And after Tex had left, asking Church just seemed tacky. Kai knows a lot of people thought that she’s rude, but even she isn’t _that_ rude.

To pass the time, Kai plays up the little kid act, complaining about being bored a lot and singing “three billion bottles of beer on the wall” until he threatens to chop off her fingers. She also makes sure to ask him if they’re there yet a lot, just for kicks.

 _Finally_ , they get to wherever it is they’re heading. Kai listens as Felix starts playing with the radio as soon as they land.

“ _Vanessa_! Good to hear from you,” he says, and wow, he sounds even more like a scumbag than usual. Kai wouldn’t have thought it was physically possible, and yet here he is, sounding like he’s a used dildo salesman. “Listen, I’d _love_ to chat, but you know, I think you should put Locus and Private Grif on the phone. I’ve got something they really should hear.”

“Locus is in custody,” and holy shit, there go Kai’s panties, because that woman has the hottest fucking voice Kai has ever heard. She wonders who exactly is on the other end of that line, because whoever she is, Kai wants to either do unspeakable things to her, or to let her do unspeakable things to Kai. Although actually, Kai would be more than happy to speak about it. She’s rapidly developing a list.

“If you say so,” Felix says, clearly disbelieving. “Just Grif then. Tell him I’ve got a present for him.”

There’s a long pause on the radio, and Kai strains forward, trying to listen. Why is Sam in custody? Why is the woman using Sam’s stupid war name instead of his real one?

“What the fuck do you want?” Kai nearly cries when she hears Dex’s voice for the first time in _ages_. She _knew_ the UNSC had been full of shit! He’s okay, he’s here, and even though everything _sucks_ , she’s feeling a lot better about everything.

“Get Locus on the phone,” Felix says.

“Yeah, not happening. What the fuck do you want?”

“Hey Kaikaina!” Felix calls over his shoulder. Kai hears Dex’s sharp intake of breath. “Pick a finger you’re willing to lose, because if your big brother doesn’t get Locus in the call in ten minutes, things are going to get messy!”

“Fuck you!” Kai screams as loud as she can, hoping it carries through the radio to Dex, and whoever else is listening. “Just cuz you can’t find a prostrate doesn’t mean you need to go after my fingers!”

“Wait, what?”

“Kai!”

“Ten minutes, _Dexter_ ,” Felix says, apparently recovering from her insult faster than she’d hoped. “You’re wasting time.” He hangs up, and gets out his knife and turns to stare at her creepily. Kai thinks he’s smiling, even though she can’t see his face. She should be happy, because his face without his helmet was an ugly little pointy thing with a smile that had too many teeth, but she doesn’t like it.

Kai was faking being scared a lot, but right now she really _is_ scared. He’s looking at her like he’s hoping Dex can’t find Sam, like he’s just waiting for an excuse to hurt her, and she doesn’t like that. She’d never gotten the impression that he _liked_ her, back home, but she’d never felt like this. He’s only gotten _scarier_ since Kai’s grown up, and that’s just fucking wrong. She fidgets and looks away, counting the seconds in her head.

It only takes five minutes before Sam comes on the radio. “Felix,” he says, and Kai nearly wants to cry as she hears his voice for the first time in years.

“Locs!”

“Where is Kaikaina?”

“Right here with me,” Felix says, getting up and sitting down next to her. He casually presses the knife against her throat again. “Say hi, brat.”

“Sam?” Kai whispers. She kind of feels all floaty and shaky and scared but also happy all at the same time. She’s crying now, and she’s not faking it at all. “Is that really you?”

She hears a sharp exhale. “Yes,” he says. “Stay calm. It’s going to be okay.”

“Man, what a reunion!” Felix says, and Kai lets out a small whimper involuntarily as he grabs her helmet and shoves her head back against the wall of the pelican. _Fuck_ , that _hurts_ , and her helmet is flashing all sorts of warnings, telling her that she should check for a concussion. She’s not sure even getting free would help her right now, dizzy with the blow and with a knife against her neck. “I mean, it’s been… twelve years since you’ve seen her, Locs? You know, for a brat, she turned out okay. _Real_ pretty.”

Sam lets out a growl. “What. Do. You. Want?”

“Control doesn’t know you’re gone yet,” Felix says flatly. “If you come back right now, they never have to, and your kid sister doesn’t start losing teeth.”

Sam exhales sharply. “You expect me to believe that?”

“I expect you to believe _this_ ,” Felix snaps, venom in his voice. “She doesn’t have a knife in her right now. That changes if you don’t come back to where you belong.” He laughs. “I get it, they’re important. Tell you what, as long as you can keep them quiet, I won’t tell Control they’re alive. That’s the part that matters right? The rest of this planet can _rot_ , as long as they’re okay.”

Kai doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but she doesn’t like it, not one bit.

“I’m in custody of the armies,” Sam says. “They will not simply allow me to leave.”

“Fine. A trade then. Prisoner transfer, whatever you have to call it. Make it _work_ , or we’ll see if she’s just as pretty without her head. Do you understand?”

“... yes.”

“Meet me at our hook up point in two hours,” Felix orders. “One pelican only—for every extra one, she loses a limb. You can bring Dex if you want—no skin off my back.”

He hangs up.

Kai tries to stop shaking but her head hurts where it hit the wall and her neck has started to bleed under his knife, and he’s going to hurt her, and Dex, and maybe even Sam, and nothing is okay, nothing at all.

He leans back, taking away the knife. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Locus just needs to relearn his place. He’ll keep you safe, and I’ll let him, as long as he stays where he belongs.”

Kai swallows, her mouth dry, and moves as far away from him as she can.

The two hours for Sam to arrive takes forever, and Kai can’t calm down at all during it, because she has no idea what’s going to happen. Sam won’t let Felix hurt her, she’s sure of that, but the rest of it…

She has no idea.

* * *

 

When Locus had surrendered, he had few illusions about what would happen next. If they let him go, it will be under close watch, and only because there is a task he is specifically required for.

He’s spent hours laying things out for his interrogator; a rebel woman he does not recognize personally, although he’s fairly sure he’s heard Felix complain about her before. But Felix complained about so many people that it is hardly noteworthy, and the woman herself seems mostly unremarkable.

She’s not in the room at the moment; either briefing the Generals or eating or sleeping herself. Agent Washington and Agent Carolina have both taken turns, asking him questions, specifically about the interests Control had in Project Freelancer, or what happened with Dex.

Dex has not come to visit him, but Locus suspects he is not permitted.

His armor has been taken from him, and Locus feels bare and vulnerable without it. He doesn’t know the last time he had gone this long without armor—perhaps not since Hawaii. But it’s worse than it was then. Now, there are plenty of people here who have every reason to put a bullet through his skull, and it would even be deserved.

He swallows down the waves of nausea that threaten to overwhelm him and puts his head between his knees, breathing heavily. He knows they’ll be watching, knows they will see this weakness, but he cannot bring himself to care right now. It is this or he tries to scratch at his skin until it all comes off.

It’s as if he had been keeping a wall up between himself and the things he had done, and now they’re all bearing down on him at once, and each incident reshaping itself into a new context.

He deserves whatever will happen next, and a thousand times more besides that.

He hopes Dex will not blame himself for this.

He’s not sure how much time has passed when he raises his head up again. He tries to regulate his breathing, to mediate, but he finds it hard to remove his mind from the cell, waiting as he is for Martinez to return to his cell and resume the questioning.

Instead, there’s a loud noise.

“Captain _Grif_!” It is Vanessa Kimball. Locus blinks slowly, wondering when Dex got promoted.

“Shut up, I need to see him, _now_!” There’s urgency in his voice.

“Let him through, Kimball,” it’s Lavernius Tucker speaking this time, just as frantic as Dex. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong indeed. “ _Please_.”

Doyle is the one who speaks, after the silence. “Very well.”

The door opens and Dex barrels in, holding his helmet in his hands. “Get on the radio,” he says. “Church, you’re recording, right?”

“Fuck, yes, okay, I’m ready, we’ve got this.” The Epsilon AI flickers into sight, before blinking out again, moving towards the helmet.

Locus takes the helmet from Dex, frowning. “What is it?”

“Felix has Kai,” Dex says, and everything goes still and cold. It feels like his heartbeat can be heard by everyone in the room, beating a tempo, loud and fast, against his ribcage. “He wants you on the radio.”

Locus swallows, and puts on Dex’s helmet. “Felix,” he says, and he’s all too aware of everyone else in the room—Lavernius Tucker is here, joined by Vanessa Kimball and Doyle, Agents Washington and Carolina, the Sergeant—who is apparently now a Colonel—and the rest of Red Team. Richard Simmons is hovering near Dex, concerned.

“Locs!” Felix sounds manic, delighted. That’s always a dangerous sign. The radio is broadcasting, not contained to the helmet. Everyone is hearing this.

“Where is Kaikaina?” _Is she alright_? He doesn’t dare ask it, but he knows Felix can hear it.

“Right here with me,” Felix says. There’s a sound of movement, and then he speaks again. “Say hi, brat.”

“Sam?” Kai sounds older, so much older, but still the same, and the taste of bile rises in his throat. She’s really here, with Felix, in danger, because of him. “Is that really you?”

Yes,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady. Dex is gripping his shoulder tightly, and with him in armor and Locus without it, the grip is bruising, fingers digging into his shoulder. “Stay calm. It’s going to be okay.”

“Man, what a reunion!” Felix is practically singing, and there’s a loud, ugly sounding thump, and Kai lets out a pained noise that makes Grif’s hands tighten further still around his shoulder. “I mean, it’s been… twelve years since you’ve seen her, Locs? You know, for a brat, she turned out okay. _Real_ pretty.” There’s a threat there, a threat that Locus refuses to think about.

Locus doesn’t often try to be intimidating; it tends to come without trying. But now he wants Felix scared, so he lets out a growl, which makes half of the Simulation Troopers jump back. “What. Do. You. Want?”

“Control doesn’t know you’re gone yet,” Felix says, and Locus reels. He hasn’t reported this? Why not? “If you come back right now, they never have to, and your kid sister doesn’t start losing fingers.”

Everyone in the room is staring right at him. “You expect me to believe that?”

“I expect you to believe _this_ ,” Felix says, and Locus knows the sound of him bargaining, knows where to listen to when he’s bluffing, and he’s _not_ , and that makes it all the worse. “She doesn’t have a knife in her right now. That changes if you don’t come back to where you belong.” He laughs. “I get it, they’re important. Tell you what, as long as you can keep them quiet, I won’t tell Control they’re alive. That’s the part that matters right? The rest of this planet can _rot_ , as long as they’re okay.”

Locus lowers his head, struggling to keep breathing. Vanessa Kimball’s gaze is scorching. Simmons has taken Dex’s hand and is holding it.

“Meet me at our hook up point in two hours,” Felix orders. “One pelican only—for every extra one, she loses a limb. You can bring Dex if you want—no skin off my back.”

He hangs up. Locus takes the helmet off his head and sets it down on the family with a thump.

“Where’s he talking about?” Agent Washington is the first to speak.

“There’s an abandoned New Republic base in the middle of the Scherzo Jungle,” Locus says automatically. “It was halfway between the New Republic headquarters and Armonia, so we would meet there when we needed to meet in person.”

“Two hours out?” Agent Carolina’s arms are crossed.

“Almost exactly,” Locus confirms.

“Then we better get going!” Lavernius Tucker says.

“We can’t just let him leave,” Vanessa Kimball speaks with a quiet authority, and Locus closes his eyes.

“He’s got my _sister_ ,” Dex snaps. “We’re not just going to let him—”

“Captain Grif,” she says quietly. “By his own admission, he only switched sides to save your life. If we let him go back to Felix, when Felix has a hostage—who is, again by his own admission, the only other person he cares about—he’ll immediately resume what he was doing. You are asking us to let a—a—”

“I believe _mass murderer_ would be the appropriate word in this situation, General Kimball,” Doyle says, his own voice icy. “You are asking us to release a mass murderer in order to save your sister’s life, when, by Felix’s own admission, he might harm her anyways once Locus returns to him.”

“He’s offering to trade your sister—who has _no_ connections to Chorus besides you and Locus, for a criminal.” Kimball says.

“He won’t trade her,” Locus says. Even to his own ears, his voice sounds distant. “He intends to keep her to ensure I remain.” And he knows that Dex will try to follow him, surrendering willingly to keep Kai safe and giving him a second hostage to use against Locus. How had he not seen this coming? He should have—there should have been _some_ precaution he could have taken, to ensure that this did not fall down on Kai.

“No one’s saying he should actually go back!” Tucker says, throwing his hands into the air. “We tricked Felix once, didn’t we?”

“Ha! And as much as I might hate to compliment Grif by proxy, his sister isn’t exactly helpless!” The Sergeant laughs loudly. “Why, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d give Felix the slip the second he gives her the opportunity.”

“We could capture him!” Simmons speaks up. “Hey, he’s just told us where he’s going to be! We could turn it against him!”

“Fuck yeah!” Lavernius Tucker punches the air. “We could totally use this!”

Kimball and Doyle look at each other. Locus feels very cold. Mentally, he tries to calculate which of them will stop him, should he try to escape. He cannot allow Kai to pay for his mistakes. Such a price is unacceptable.

“Fine,” Kimball says, finally. “We capture Felix. Locus can be the bait.” She turns to Agent Carolina. “You take his camouflage unit. If it looks like he’s planning on leaving with Felix… I expect you to stop him.” Her voice is hard. “No matter what, Locus _cannot_ go with Felix. Do you understand?”

Carolina nods without hesitation.

“One pelican,” Washington says, thoughtful. “Grif, you’re flying. Carolina’s in stealth. Tucker, you’re coming too.”

“And me,” Simmons speaks up, sounding terrified but standing firm. “I’m coming too.” He still hasn’t let go of Dex’s hand.

No one objects, although there are several people who don’t wish to be left behind. Doctor Grey is also recruited, in case Felix has lied and Kaikaina is hurt. They’re going in with the intention to rescue her, above all else, and something about that is calming.

Locus puts on his armor, minus one camouflage unit, and gets into the pelican. He’s handcuffed once he sits down. They can’t take the risk that Felix and he have a code, that he’s been told to kill any guests beyond Dex. Dex is flying, and Simmons sits up front with him.

Agent Washington sits across from him. His gun is out, but he’s not pointing it at Locus. Not yet, at least. That will change soon, Locus suspects.

Because there is almost no chance that only the five of them will be able to capture Felix, not when Felix has a hostage that incapacitates at least himself and Dex. It could easily become three against three, if Felix plays his cards right. He wonders if this has occurred to Washington yet.

He tries to figure out what Felix’s game is here, what exactly. He wants Locus back... by his side? So he can kill him? Perhaps he intends to break him, to kill Kai and Dex to free Locus from his weaknesses. Distance had worked, it seemed, for a while, but re-exposure had opened those old wounds, those vulnerabilities, and Dex had pressed himself right back into his life, reawakening who he had been, before everything had gone wrong. Before he had left, before he had killed the girl to save Felix, before he had nearly killed Felix while sleeping. Before Locus had surrendered to the numbness, to Felix, allowing himself to be manipulated, to be consumed, to be an unthinking, unquestioning weapon. Dex had brought him back from that. Perhaps Felix thinks that if he simply gets rid of him and Kai, things can go back to the way they were.

The knowledge that Felix might have tampered with the mission, might have sabotaged it on purpose, changes nothing. He had still made that decision, had chosen Felix over the life of the innocent child.

Felix’s hand in his actions didn’t change his culpability. He could have gone back, could have found them, might have been able to save them from this, all of this.

And now, Kai is paying for his decisions.

“We’re almost there,” Carolina says. She walks over, and removes the handcuffs. She tilts her head. “If we don’t rescue Kaikaina or to capture him, will you go with him?”

His heart hammers in his ears as he tries to imagine that—life with Felix, doing their old work, but with an eternal threat to Kai and Dex hanging over his head. Any semblance of control that he’d ever had, gone, broken and pliant to Felix’s demands. Felix wouldn’t allow him to see them either; kept away, only knowing how they were when they were being hurt to punish him for noncompliance. Perhaps he’d be allowed to visit as a reward, but only rarely. And now, with the veil lifted from his eyes, to see the horrors he was causing, without any of his old excuses or justifications or ability to distance himself from what he’s done…

It can be nothing but hell. A hell for all three of them, a hell that will consume all of Chorus, and everyone Dex and Kai—everyone his _family_ cares about. And that is _if_ Felix intends to keep them alive. He might simply kill them both on the spot, to ensure that Locus has nothing left. Nothing except him.

Two scenarios, equally bleak and hopeless.

“No,” he says, and he means it. He doesn’t point out that she intends to kill him if he tried to. It seems crude, almost.

The pelican lands, and the door opens. Locus swallows, and moves.

Felix’s pelican is right across from where they’re landing, and Felix is there, holding Kai by the elbow. Her hands are cuffed behind her back, and she’s in bright yellow armor. Locus wants to reach out for her, feeling out of breath. She’s grown. It’s been twelve years since he’s seen her, and there hasn’t been a single day that’s passed since that he hasn’t missed her, but to be reunited _now_ , like this, is painful beyond words, in a visceral way that only Felix could manage.

“You were almost late,” Felix says. It’s a lie, but Locus says nothing.

“Let her go,” he says, without hope.

Felix laughs. “Don’t be dumb. Get in the pelican. _Then_ I’ll let her go.” The lie is obvious as he jerks his head. He sees Washington and Simmons, standing at the ready, and tugs Kai in front of him, moving a knife lazily to her throat. “C’mon,” he laughs. “Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”

Dex is the one to move first, pushing past Locus towards Felix and the pelican. Without thinking, Locus lunges forward, pulling him back. “What are you _doing_?” he hisses, trying to keep his voice too low for the others to hear. He’d have thought that Simmons would have been able to keep him back.

“We’re _not_ letting him hurt her,” Dex says. He can tell just as easily as Locus that Felix intends to keep her. And, like him, he can’t help but doubt Carolina and Washington’s abilities to bring down Felix. Felix has always been unbeatable. Locus can clearly see his entire life now, and the constant is that Felix always gets what he wants. “The two of us are getting in that fucking pelican, do you hear me?” 

Locus nearly goes numb at that, nearly lets go, nearly does what Dex says. Following orders—it would be so easy, so simple.

But he can’t let that happen. Maybe he can’t rescue Kai from Felix’s grasp, but he can at least not give Felix another person to hurt, to use against him.

“No,” he says, trying to put a semblance of authority into his voice. “You’re staying here.”

Felix laughs. “Oh, c’mon _Sam_ ,” the name is wielded like a whip, and Locus recoils, but he manages to keep his grip on Dex. “Let the kid tag along. It’ll be _fun_. We can talk about the good old days—like, y’know, on Hawaii!”

“You were barely even there, asshole!” Dex says, tugging on Locus’s grip.

“Was I? I was _this close_ to being your new stepdad, too!” There’s a feral grin in Felix’s voice, mocking them all.

“Wait,” Grif says, slowly, like he’s just realized something. It’s a gut punch, as the last piece falls into place. Locus wonders how he had not seen it earlier. The boyfriend. The one who had dragged them into debt, the one who had caused the ruin of _everything_. Of course it had been Felix. What little Locus had managed to build, all those years ago Felix had ripped up by the very roots. He had poisoned the first scrap of goodness that Locus had managed to find after the war, out of spite or cruelty or a desire to see Locus as a weapon for him to use.

“That’s right!” Felix crows, and Locus wonders how long he has wanted to say that; Felix hates having to keep quiet about his accomplishments, and this is surely one of his favorite games. “ _I fucked your mom!_ ” Felix laughs and laughs and laughs as he lowers the knife from Kai’s throat. But he keeps her in front of him. A human shield.

Locus sees a glimmer of camouflage out of the corner of his eye and he’s struck by fear—Carolina is a professional, and as Vanessa Kimball said, Kai means nothing to her or the armies. She is supposed to take down Felix. He’s about to move forward, to give her another target instead of Kai and Felix, when someone else moves first.

It’s Kai.

With terrifying strength, she rips Felix’s hand off her arm, and kicks him right in the groin so that he’s sent stumbling backwards into the pelican. The cuffs fall to the ground—she’s slipped out of them somehow—and she throws herself forward, onto the ground, out of the way.

Suddenly, the entire world seems to slow down.

“You little—!” Felix screams, trying to scramble forward, but it’s already too late. His protection is gone, and he had, in his flare for the dramatic, chosen to wield a knife instead of a gun. It’s all the opening they need.

Simmons, Washington, and Carolina all open fire on Felix, raising their weapons in perfect unison. Locus has seen a few glimpses of their abilities to work as a team; and here, he sees it with the three of them, a single unit, focused on their target.

There’s the sound that Locus knows so well; bullets puncturing through armor, flesh, and bone. A ragged scream pierces the air, familiar in that Locus has heard screams like it a thousand times, but different because he has never heard _Felix_ make a noise like that. He once might have thought it impossible; Felix has always seemed strangely invincible, untouchable, compared to Locus, who took the brunt of their fighting, and had nightmares that never seemed to even brush by Felix. But Locus doesn’t watch as his partner dies, because he’s staring at Kai.

The second the guns stop firing, she’s on her feet, and she’s charging forwards, towards them, throwing her arms around both of them, laughing. “You’re here! You’re here! You’re here!”

The three of them sink to the ground, arms around each other, and Locus feels something damp on his cheeks as he hugs them tightly, unsure of when he’ll be able to let go.

“Ha! I knew I’d be able to get out of those, _totally_ worth it, when he said he knew where you were I _knew_ it would be okay,” Kai is babbling, but Locus doesn’t say anything, although he’s mentally flinching at Kai’s implication that she allowed herself to be captured to find them.

She pulls back, breaking the hug, and shoves at him. He falls to the ground, barely catching himself to keep his head from slamming against the rock.

“You dick! You left!”

“I know,” Locus says. “I’m sorry.”

Letting out a loud sobbing noise, she throws herself on top of him. “Worst—big—brother—ever,” she sobs, and Locus can only pat her back and hold her.

Later will find the three of them in a single room in Armonia, knocking elbows as they eat food that Dex has prepared, watching bad science fiction while the war continues to wage on. Hargrove brings in more men, new leaders, new resources. An agreement is struck with Doyle and Kimball; a delay to Locus’ trial in exchange for his assistance in the war for the duration of it.

The war is still brutal; Hargrove is furious, and pours resources upon resources onto the planet, intending to destroy everything in his path. But with the information that Locus has managed to recover and the joint force of the armies, Hargrove will lose, they are confident in this. It might take months, maybe years, but there will be victory.

Locus will attempt to intimidate Kai’s potential partners, she and Dex will mock him about Washington and avoid talking about Felix, and Locus and Kai will attempt to understand Dex’s burgeoning relationship with Simmons.

There will be arguments and nightmares and tears. It will be far from perfect; Locus lost any chance of that when he left, so long ago.

But it is home.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://secretlystephaniebrown.tumblr.com/)!


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